Volume 105, Issue 1

From "just war" to the "holy war"? Justification of the first crusades in medieval Canon law . The European history of public international law has often dealt with the concept of "just war", almost never with the "holy war". This seems to be rather an Islamic phenomenon. But ever since Urban II called for the first crusade in 1095, Europe too knew the idea of justifying war with religious reasons. Until now this phenomenon has been used to denounce the cruelty of Christianity. We need, therefore, a new critical access to this topic. The origin of the idea in 1095 has to be linked with the development of penancy and indulgencies in their terms and concepts. We will see how skeptically the canonists of the age reacted and how little representative this immediately afterwards abandoned idea was of its time. Because Europe, in the end, rejected the idea of a "holy war", this topic is an important facette of the European evolution of public international law and does not prove the cruelty of the church. This article is part of a greater research project on the influence of medieval Canon law on public international law.

The Parisian School of Law (end of the 12 th to the beginning of the 13 th century) . The lecture of which the text is published below, was presented at the 'International Days' of the Society for the History of Law that was held in Bologna in May 2018. It aims to reflect on the research carried out on the Parisian school since the famous speech by Stephen Kuttner made at the 1937 Journées in Paris on 'The beginnings of the French canonist school'. Born after the publication of Gratian's Decretum , the Parisian school first developed during the long pontificate of Alexander III (1159–1181). Summae, distinctions and quaestiones about the Decretum developed during the 1180s, due to the presence of three very active 'Englishmen' in particular: Rodoicus Modicipassus, Ricardus de Mores (known as 'Ricardus the Englishman') and Honorius de Kent. Without neglecting the theological aspects, all three appeal to Roman law in their works, but also to the new pontifical decretals. The first decade of the thirteenth century was then marked by the publication of two important apparati on the Decretum: Ecce vicit leo and Animal est substantia , whose authors turn resolutely to Roman law. A specific teaching in the latter seems to have emerged during the same period, which sees the flourishing of the ius novum , a new teaching based on the Campilatio prima by Bernardus of Pavia. This dual orientation would then be strongly criticised by some theologians, for whom Paris was their undisputed centre of study. They then obtained a prohibition on the teaching of Roman law in Paris from Pope Honorius III in 1219.

The foedera pacis and the principle pacta sunt servanda. Researches on the doctrines of medieval jurists (12 th –15 th c.). The foedera pacis (peace accords) belong to the core of the fundamental themes of the ius gentium . Some passages of Isidore from Seville and Augustine, handed down in Gratian's Decretum, and some fragments contained in Justinian's Digest (Gaius, Hermogenianus, Ulpianus) were the main sources on which the medieval jurists elaborated their doctrines concerning the foundations of the foedera pacis (pactum and fides) and the effects arising from these premises. The doctrines of medieval jurists on the foedera pacis represent one of the roots that nourished the reflections of the Fathers of modern international law (Grotius' thought is here examined).

The theory of versari in re illicita in the thougth of Giovanni d'Andrea: dolus generalis? Jurists of the ius commune age are engaged on several fronts in the long process of building human responsibility in the criminal field. The doctores elaborate their thoughts in a context that does not yet know the clear boundaries of criminal law as an autonomous legal science. The reflections of scientia iuris , engaged in the various fields of the right to construct juridical figures that respond to the needs of the ever-changing society, contribute in a decisive way to defining different forms of personal criminal responsibility that slowly detach from the ex-facto responsibility of the high-medieval centuries.

Seat of Justice and Second Cathedral of the Rhineland. The Basilica of Constantine as a point of encounter of law and religion in Trier . The Aula Palatina in Trier was part of the residence of the Roman Emperors and as such a place of legislation and jurisdiction. Notably, the trial of Priscillian of Avila, often labelled the first heresy trial in church history, was likely conducted in the Aula Palatina. Centuries later, the Roman building was converted into Trier's first protestant church. Caspar Olevianus, the Trier-born jurist and Calvinist reformer, is remembered nearby. The so-called Basilica of Constantine provides thus a peculiarly apt venue for exploring the mutual influences and entanglements of law and Christian religion in European history.

Roman Law and Roman Church. A Foray in the Field of Legal History . This is the slightly amended text of a public lecture delivered at the invitation of the organizers of the 42 nd German Legal History Conference in September 2018 in Trier. After briefly sketching the enormous range of the discipline of legal history, the lecture focuses on the law of contract and the law of succession; and it seeks to demonstrate the importance of Rome on the development of European private law: both the Rome of pagan antiquity and of the Christian Church.

The manuscripts of the Liber Clementinarum of Johannes de Imola ( 1404 ). As the author of this contribution has already argued in other occasions, in this paper he would like to highlight once more the importance of manuscripts for research in the literature of late medieval canon law. Manuscript witnesses of canon law literature after 1234 have never been subject of systematic review. This offers an explanation for the fact that this period has been largely disregarded in modern research. The example, chosen for this paper, shows that in particular the makeup and the external features of the manuscripts provide insights which paradoxically may be more revealing than the text itself: The commentary on the Constitutiones Clementinae by the Bolognese doctor utriusque iuris Iohannes de Imola (ca. 1375-1436) is preserved in more than 30 manuscripts, which contain an amazing amount of information regarding dates, scribes, commissioners and owners; last but not least, these manuscripts were continued seamlessly by a series of early printed editions. Altogether, they offer a vivid picture of the making, the proliferation and the use of Iohannes's work.

From utensilium to insignium: The juridical and esthetic order of the canons' vestment . The paper deals with the inner structure of the institutes of secular canons and the regulations of their specific vestments. As the liturgical vestment set for celebrating mass (alb, stole, chasuble resp. dalmatic) and for the liturgy of the office of the hours in the choir (alb, surplice, cope) was common for the whole clergy, in the (high) middle ages tendencies were shown to establish elements as insignia of a canon, e.g. the material, form, colour and wearing of the often hooded almuce. Topics of the research are the medieval goals to further an image of unity of the institution, to underline the hierarchic function of a single canon, and at last to show, where is the ecclesiastical instance to establish a juridical rule.

Protection of the church and state stability through the absence of religious 'shallowness': views on religion-policy of Jeremias Gotthelf and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel out of a spirit of reconciliation . The article re-examines a thesis of Paul Baumgartner published in 1945: "Jeremias Gotthelf's, 'Zeitgeist and Bernergeist', A Study on Introduction and Interpretation", that if the Swiss writer and keen Hegel-opponent Jeremias Gotthelf had read any book of the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, some of this would have received his recognition. Both Gotthelf and Hegel see the Reformation to be the cause of the emergence of a strong state. For Gotthelf, this marks the beginning of a process of strengthening the state at the expense of the church. Hegel, on the other hand, considers the modern state to be the reality of freedom, produced by the Christian 'religion of freedom' (Rph, §270 Z., p. 430). In contrast to Gotthelf, for whom only Christ can reconcile the state and religion, Hegel praises the French Revolution as "reconciliation of the divine with the world". For Gotthelf, the French Revolution was only a poor imitation of the process of spiritual and political liberation initiated by the Reformation, through which Christ reduced people to their original liberty. Nevertheless, both Gotthelf and Hegel want to protect the state and the church from falling apart, they reject organizational unity of state – religion – church in the sense of a theocracy, and demand the protection of church communities.