CHAPTER XXXIII
MEDIAEVAL APPROPRIATION OF THE ROMAN LAW
I. THE FONTES JURIS CIVILIS.
II. ROMAN AND BARBARIAN CODIFICATION.
III. THE MEDIAEVAL APPROPRIATION.
IV. CHURCH LAW.
V. POLITICAL THEORIZING.
Classical studies, and the gradual development of mediaeval prose and verse, discussed in the preceding chapters, illustrate modes of mediaeval progress. But of all examples of mediaeval intellectual growth through the appropriation of the antique, none is more completely illuminating than the mediaeval use of Roman law. As with patristic theology and antique philosophy, the Roman law was crudely taken and then painfully learned, till in the end, vitally and broadly mastered, it became even a means and mode of mediaeval thinking. Its mediaeval appropriation illustrates the legal capacity of the Middle Ages and their concern with law both as a practical business and an intellectual interest.
I
Primitive law is practical; it develops through the adjustment of social exigencies. Gradually, however, in an intelligent community which is progressing under favouring influences, some definite consciousness of legal propriety, utility, or justice, makes itself articulate in statements of general principles of legal right and in a steady endeavour to adjust legal relationships and adjudicate actual
controversies in accordance. This endeavour to formulate just
231
