Landrecht (medieval)

When land rights are referred to the law in force in a country of the Holy Roman Empire in the Middle Ages and in early modern times. The emerging in the territories of the Empire since the 12th century land rights have evolved from the older tribal rights of Saxony, Swabia, Bavaria and Bohemia. Through laws and privileges of the princes and the case law of the District Courts these old rights were supplemented and further developed. Later Roman Law was received and recorded in the land rights. On the citizens of the cities the Land Law was applied only subsidiary, since they were initially under the city charter and the autonomous jurisdiction of their communities.

Content

The land rights contained provisions for all possible areas of law: Criminal Law, Civil Law, Police, fiefdom and constitutional law. In this case, these areas were not necessarily completely covered. Often next were also the Saxons law, Roman law and later reaching legal provisions.

Recording

To very different times the land rights were written down. The Austrian land rights has been developed to Babenberg and about 1278 under King Rudolph I and 1298 Albrecht I recorded. The based on common law land rights Styria was probably written in the second half of the 14th century and was also in Carinthia. The Tyrolean land rights emerged from the end of the 13th century, summed up in Salzburg Archbishop Frederick III. 1328 land law together in a national order. In the Palatinate the recording of land rights was only in the 16th century. In Bohemia, the Czech land law has developed primarily through the collection of judgments of the District Court, which were collected in the country so-called panels. The bohemian trend has also influenced the Moravian land rights and the right parts of Silesia.

The emergence of land rights in the Middle Ages was crucial for the development of the countries that constituted themselves as a legal community of the free inhabitants. Were they once formed, as such, they remained mostly even as a separate legal and political units obtained when several were united under the rule of a dynasty, such as the many territories of the Habsburg monarchy.

With the introduction of the Civil Code the land rights have been set anywhere except force.