Fjordman Essay

EUROPENEWS PUBLISHES FIRST FJORDMAN REPORT OF THE YEAR: GERMANIC AND ISLAMIC PRACTICES……..

Medieval Law – Germanic and Islamic Practices

EuropeNews 1 January 2012
By Fjordman

Professor Erik Anners, a Swedish historian of law, compares the legal profession to engineering and believes that law is the engineering of society. European legal history contains traces of both Greek and Mosaic law, which themselves carried some impressions of earlier civilizations, especially that of Mesopotamia. But European law was formed during the Middle Ages in a meeting between Roman law and other, especially Germanic, customs.

Anners comments that the rational school of law which emerged in Western Europe during the High Middle Ages differed strikingly from that found in Islamic regions, especially considering that they had both encountered the same Roman legal heritage. We have the testimony of an educated Muslim man from Spain travelling in the Crusader kingdoms in the twelfth century and noting, somewhat reluctantly, that the European infidels enjoyed a greater security of law than the contemporary Muslims did with their “corrupt qadis,” sharia judges.

Roman law – beginning with the Twelve Tables, the earliest written legislation of Roman law, traditionally dated to ca. 450 BC – dealt with matters of inheritance, obligations and contracts, property and individual persons. It forms the basis for the Civil Law codes of most countries of Continental Europe, distinguished from the Common Law of English-speaking countries.

In England, Common Law was largely Germanic law. For the Germanic peoples, the tribal assembly (mot or thing) had traditionally elected kings and declared war. However, Germanic customary law designed for non-literate societies proved inadequate to cope with complex urban commerce. Like the Roman Emperors before them, the Christian Emperor Charlemagne and his successors claimed the power to make laws for all their subjects. The Roman Catholic Church applied Canon Law in the Church courts. This was heavily influenced by Roman law.

The traditional customs of various European societies gradually blended with Roman customs. Before the coming of Christianity during the Middle Ages, Germanic peoples used to live in pre-state societies where there was no strong centralized authority that could enforce the law, but theft and violent crimes obviously took place in such societies, too, and had to be dealt with somehow. Individuals therefore depended upon their kin and clan for protection.

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2 Responses

  1. What the Christian faith brought to Europe was not just the Judaic law but tempered all with mercy and compassion. Essentially it civilised the previous codes of law.

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