Historian Fw Maitland Observed That Legal Documents
The canonical jurisprudence of Italian physicians has become the canon law of the Western world. Of all the local courts, wherever they are, there has been an appeal to the Supreme Court of Rome. But the temporal law of each country felt the influence of the new learning. Apparently, we could establish a rule like this: where the attack is postponed the longest, it is the most severe. In the thirteenth century, the Parliament of Paris began the harmonization and rationalization of the provincial customs of northern France, through Romanization. In the sixteenth century, after the “renewal of letters”, Italian jurisprudence conquered Germany and swept away before it a large part of the old national law. Wherever it finds a weak judicial system, because it is not centralized, it wins an easy triumph. Scotland arrived late; But he came to stay. But if a man is accused of a crime, he will not always be allowed to escape under oath. Most likely, he will be sent to the test. Trial is understood as “God`s judgment.” It may be of pagan origin, but long ago, the Christian Church made it its own, prescribed a solemn ritual for the consecration of these instruments – fire, water – that will reveal the truth.
The water in the pit is summoned to receive the innocent and reject the guilty. Those who sink are safe, those who swim are lost. The glowing iron weighing one pound must be lifted and carried on three steps. The hand that held it is then sealed in a cloth. Three days later, the seal was broken. Is the hand clean or lazy? That is the terrible question. A blister “the size of half a walnut” is deadly. We don`t know how these tests worked in practice. We rarely receive stories about them, unless, as happens from time to time, the local saint intervenes and performs a miracle. We can`t help but suspect that it was good to be good friends with the priest when you went to the test. If we say that the law serves three main purposes, that it punishes crimes, repairs wrongs and settles disputes – and perhaps we do not need to pursue this further – then we can continue to say that in the past, the first two of these three objectives were indiscriminately confused, while the legislator rarely worries about the third.
If he can keep the peace, suppress violence and theft, and keep revenge within moderate limits, he is very satisfied; It will not endeavour to enact a law on contracts or inheritance, a law on husband and wife, a law on landlord and tenant. All this can be safely left to the unwritten tradition. He does not care to satisfy the curiosity of a distant posterity who wants to dive curiously into these questions and write books about them. Thus, to give an example, the courts must have been willing to settle disputes relating to the property of the dead; There must have been a general inheritance law or various tribal or local laws. But legislators don`t tell us anything about it. If we want to recover the old rules, we must make the most of the wandering allusions and random stories, and those archaisms that we find anchored in the law of later days. A professional class of contemporary English lawyers was just beginning to form. We say “by English lawyers” because there have been “legislators” and “decitists” in the country for over a century. These law clerks and decitists formed a professional class; They agreed to defend the causes of those who would pay their fees. They made a big deal, because the clergy of the time were extremely quarrelsome. The bishop, who was not constantly involved in endless quarrels with two or three wealthy religious houses, was either a very happy guardian or a very negligent guardian of the rights of his episcopal see. And all the paths of ecclesiastical litigation led to Rome.
Appeals to the pope were made at every stage of each case, and the most famous Italian lawyers were retained as lawyers. The King of England, often involved in disputes over the election of bishops – competitions that would sooner or later take place before the Roman Curia – kept the Italian canonists in his salary.
