Breviary of Alaric

The Lex Romana Visigothorum ( Roman Code of the Visigoths ) of 506, also Breviarium Alarici ( anum ) called ( Breviary of Alaric ), was an important compilation of imperial decrees and legal explanations. The Lex Romana Visigothorum represents a sum of the Western Roman vulgar law and had a up in the High Middle Ages, reaching historical impact in Southwest Europe.

Construction and content

At the beginning of the 6th century, under the name " Lex " in the Visigothic kingdom ( Lex Romana Visigothorum ) and in Burgundy Empire ( Lex Romana Burgundionum ) compiled legal records in the form of excerpts from earlier legal writings contained the largely Roman law and probably only for the Romanesque and not in the true sense had Roman population validity. The law decrees and confirmations of previously existing law should be on the floor of the dissolved Roman Empire in the context of the armed conflict between the Germanic successor kingdoms; as a legal fuses, they were apparently to advertise in the Catholic Church and the local population to support for each new rule.

The Lex Romana Visigothorum was adopted by the Visigothic king Alaric II in 506, and published in the town of Aire for the first time. This took the form according to the usual procedure in the Roman Late Antiquity imperial legislation. The gothic - ruler's origin had the " conmonitorium ," the preface, only the multiple attribution of " rex Alaricus " as a legislative body and one responsible for the development of Codex court officials, the " Goiaricus comes " from; a politically sovereign that have become Visigoths came now as overlord and the Roman population, and gave her the participation of the clergy and the nobility ( " adhibitis sacerdotibus ac nobilibus viris " ) laws.

In detail, from the Lex Romana Visigothorum:

• Sixteen books of the Theodosian Code
• The stories of Theodosius II,
• Valentinian III. ,
• Marcian,
• Majorian and
• Libius Severus,

The Lex contains both actual laws and decrees explanations. All parts with the exception of the Institutiones of Gaius partly textual, partly detailed content summaries are added, which probably date from the 5th century. The main legal-historical value of the Lex Romana Visigothorum is that it is the only collection of Roman law, in which the first five books of the Code of Theodosius, and the five books have survived the Sententiae Receptae of Julius Paulus; and until the discovery of a manuscript in the Abbey Library of Verona, containing the greater part of the Institutiones of Gaius, it was the only manuscript in which parts of the work of this central Roman jurists have been handed down.

Effect story

The effect of history of the Lex Romana Visigothorum enough space and time beyond the Visigothic kingdom, which continued to exist until 711 in Spain. While the realm part of the Pyrenees mostly fell north after the battle of Vouillé 507 to the Franks, but remained the law originally written solely for the novels obviously there still in use, now or gradually with territorial validity. In the year 768, over 260 years after its creation, verified and acknowledged Charlemagne the Lex Romana Visigothorum. Thus, a continuation of the Roman law was guaranteed in its vulgarized form in the former Visigothic part of France by royal decree. In Visigothic kingdom itself was abolished 654 Lex Romana Visiogothorum by the introduction of the valid for the whole population Lex Visigothorum.

Based on the Lex Romana Visigothorum emerged from the 7th century to the 9th century, mostly in the Frankish kingdom, at least ten different extracts and edits ( Epitomae Breviarii, not all of which are already edited ). We are especially famous edits from the Lombard- Rhaetian room, probably from the first half of the 8th century, and the name Lex Romana Curiensis ( after the spread in Churrätien, ie, in the north - Italian ostschweizerisch - Vorarlberg area ) or Lex Romana Utinensis wear ( after the site of a lost manuscript Udine ). Introduced in the 19th century designation as " Lex " is misleading here. Recent research reviewing handed in two Rhaetian and a Veronese manuscript and in two fragments Milan text as a literary reception of the Visigothic template, since no legislative will is to be recognized. The template did not affect the existing, already embossed Roman customary law, but, as substantive misinterpretations show was rather alienated from it.

Cultural and legal history, the Lex Romana Visigothorum is of paramount importance. It does not seem to be coincidental that the reception of Roman law in the Middle Ages in the areas from where they began - North Italy / Bologna - and while at first spread - South of France - was able to build a really unbroken Roman law influenced legal culture they therefore do not actually introduced there, but rather renewed.

Designation

The Lex Romana Visigothorum is Anianus referred to in a notice of the royal scribe as the Codex, but unlike the Codex Justinian, from which the writings were excluded from lawyers, it includes imperial laws (leges ) and legal treatises (jura ). Because the text of a royal conmonitorium preceded with the provision that only Anianus should have certified copies of legal force, the compilation of the Codex of many writers is appropriated Anianus and referred to this more often than Breviary of Anianus ( Breviarium Aniani ). It seems that the Codex at the Visigoths as Lex Romana or Lex Theodosii was known. The name Breviarium Breviarium Alarici or Alaric, he received only by the legal historian Tilius in the 16th century to distinguish it from the Lombard- Rhaetian edits. The first complete edition of Johannes Sichard delivered under the title: Codicis Theodosiani libri XVI, Basel 1528; the next new and relevant to today ( also with regard to the designation as Lex Romana Visigothorum ) got Gustav Haenel 1849.

Swell

• Gustav Haenel: Lex Romana Visigothorum. Teubner, Berlin 1849 (reprint: Scientia Verlag Aalen 1962).