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Roman Law as Part of Ancient Civilization: Reflections on Leopold Wenger's Last Work

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2016

Hans Julius Wolff
Hans Julius Wolff*
Affiliation:
University of Freiburg i. Brsg.
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Extract

The monumental volume with which we are dealing is the legacy left to his science by a man who will always be counted among the most distinguished and most influential scholars of Roman law and ancient legal history in the first half of the twentieth century. As early as 1902, when he first began to teach Roman law at the University of Graz, Leopold Wenger had conceived a plan of writing a history of the whole legal order of the Romans that would comprise the total of public, procedural, and private institutions in one great unit. He proposed to see his unit in the light of its general political and cultural setting and to interpret it as bringing to its climax and final achievement, under Justinian, the evolution of law and legal thought of all antiquity; antiquity itself he understood as one single historical process interrelating the multitude of peoples and civilizations of the Mediterranean area that grew and declined, succeeded and influenced each other, until they were absorbed into the Roman Empire and were thus enabled to transmit their common heritage to later centuries. Understandably enough, this gigantic project involved more than one scholar could accomplish in one lifetime. Wenger was not able to carry it out. He did, however, succeed in completing, in this detailed description and discussion of the sources, the first instalment, and happily lived to see its publication shortly before his death on September 21, 1953, at the age of seventy-nine.

Type
Miscellany
Information
Traditio , Volume 11 , 1955 , pp. 381 - 394
Copyright
Copyright © Fordham University Press 

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References

1 Schulz, F., History of Roman Legal Science (Oxford 1946); Kunkel, W., Herkunft und soziale Stellung der römischen Juristen (Weimar 1952); cf. also Wolff, H. J., Roman Law (Norman, Okla. 1951) ch. IV (pp. 91ff.).Google Scholar

2 For a new critical edition of the text and a complete bibliography, see Oliver, J. A. and Palmer, R. E. A., ‘Text of the Tabula Hebana,’ American Journal of Philology 75 (1954) 225–49; cf. also d'Ors, A., in Studia et Documenta Historiae et Juris 20 (1954) 460ff.Google Scholar

3 See Guarino, A., ‘L'esaurimento del ius honorarium e la pretesa codificazione dell’ Editto,’ Studi in memoria di Emilio Albertario (Milan 1953) I 623ff.; ‘La leggenda sulla codificazione dell’ Editto e la sua genesi,’ Atti del Congresso Internazionale di diritto romano e di storia del diritto, Verona 27-28-29-IX-1948 (Milan 1951) II 167ff. Against Guarino, Berger, A., Studi Albertario cit. 611ff, and E. Volterra, in Scritti della Facoltà Giuridica di Bologna in onore di U. Borsi (Padua 1955), p. 19 of the offprint. Google Scholar

4 Cf. Schulz, , Hist. 143, 300; Wieacker, F., in Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung, Rom. Abt. [= ZSSR] 67 (1950) 382ff., Studi in onore di V. Arangio-Ruiz (Naples 1952) IV 241ff.; Wolff, H. J., in Seminar 7 (1949) 69ff., Scritti in onore di C. Ferrini (Milan 1949) IV 64ff., Festschrift F. Schulz (Weimar 1951) II 145ff., Iura 3 (1952) 132ff.; Kaser, M., in ZSSR 69 (1952) 60ff., in particular 63, 76.Google Scholar

5 Wieacker, Thus, Studi Arangio-Ruiz cit., especially 255ff.; for an earlier statement cf. Niedermeyer, H., Atti del Congresso Internazionale di diritto romano - Roma (Rome 1934) I 353ff.Google Scholar

6 Wolff, Thus, Festschr. Schulz cit. 166ff.Google Scholar

7 Cf. Berger, A., in Classical Journal 43 (1948) 440, Seminar 10 (1952) 96f., Encyclopedic Dictionary of Roman Law (Transact. Amer. Philos. Soc. 43.2; Philadelphia 1953) 450 s.v. ‘Editio secunda’; F. Pringsheim, in Journal of Juristic Papyrology 7-8 (1954) 163f; Schiller, , op. cit. 81f.Google Scholar

8 See also the review by Kaser, M., in ZSSR 71 (1954) 403ff.; his tendency is similar to that of this writer.Google Scholar

8a On the fundamental importance of the historical setting for the doctrinal understanding of all law see De Francisci's, P. programmatic article, ‘Punti di orientamento per lo studio del diritto’ in Rivista italiana per le scienze giuridiche 1949, pp. 69 ff.Google Scholar

9 Reichsrecht und Volksrecht in den östlichen Provinzen des römischen Kaiserreichs (Leipzig 1891).Google Scholar

10 See, most recently, Pringsheim, , loc. cit., also ZSSR 69 (1952) 399.Google Scholar

11 Cf. Kaser, , op. cit. 407.Google Scholar

12 Cf. Jörs, P. Kunkel, W., Römisches Recht (3rd ed. Berlin-Göttingen-Heidelberg 1949) 190, with bibliography in note 14.Google Scholar

13 Mitteis, , Reichsrecht und Volksrecht 256ff.; Bonfante, P., Corsodi diritto romano I (Rome 1925) 380f.Google Scholar

14 Wolff, , in Seminar 3 (1945) 21ff.Google Scholar

15 Cf. Kaser, , op. cit. 408.Google Scholar

16 Cf. also Pringsheim, , op. cit. (n. 7) 166. A few instances: Just as in other more primitive systems, the contractual obligation was conceived in early Roman law, as can still be recognized in the nexum, not as a duty to perform but as a mere liability, that is to say, as giving the creditor the power to seize the debtor and/or his property in case of non-performance. Accordingly, the judicial action was originally (and essentially, though not functionally, even in the classical ordo iudiciorum) aimed at obtaining permission to bring unlimited execution against the defendant, unless he paid the ransom fixed by the judgement (condemnatio pecuniaria), but not at having the court issue to the defendant an enforceable order to pay (cf. Wolff, , in Studi in memoria di P. Koschaker ‘L'Europa e il diritto romano‘ II [1954] 418f.).— Roman law, like other early laws, started out from the concept of a merely relative ownership (the most authoritative discussion of this problem is now M. Kaser's Eigentum und Besitz im älteren römischen Recht, Weimar 1943).Google Scholar

17 Cf. Wolff, , Studi Koschaker cit. 420f.Google Scholar

17a I fully agree with Schiller when he, op. cit. 81 f., professes himself ‘far from convinced that anonymous revisionists seriously altered the substance of the ideas of the classical jurists.’ But he is mistaken in assuming that such would have to be the conclusion to be drawn from the discovery that the texts of classical writers were partly reconstituted by editors of the fourth century. Cf. also Kaser, , in ZSSR 69 (1952) 67, 76, 79, 99.Google Scholar

18 Cf. also Kaser, , ZSSR 71 (1954) 407.Google Scholar

19 It may be sufficient here to refer to the famous work in which Riccobono for the first time pointed out his views in extenso : ‘Dal diritto romano classico al diritto moderno’ in Annali del Seminario Giuridico del’ Università di Palermo 3–4 (1917) 165–730.Google Scholar

20 The most vigorous proponent of this view was E. Albertario; he stated it comprehensively in his Introduzione storica allo studio del diritto romano giustinianeo (Milan 1935) 81ff.; literature pro and con listed by Albertario 83 n. 5, 84 n. 6.Google Scholar

21 See, most recently, Pringsheim's statements quoted in n. 10 supra; cf. also Kaser, , in ZSSR 69 (1952) 83f.Google Scholar

22 Stroux in his monograph of 1926, Summum ius summa iniuria; ein Kapitel aus der Geschichte der interpretatio iuris, Riccobono in his introduction to an Italian translation of Stroux's article, Ann. Sem. Giurid. Palermo 12 (1934) 639ff.; both writings (Riccobono's in German translation) reprinted in Stroux, J., Römische Rechtswissenschaft und Rhetorik (Potsdam 1949).Google Scholar

23 Valuable preliminary statements were made by Wieacker, F., in Gnomon 22 (1950) 255ff.Google Scholar

24 Cf. Kunkel, W., in Festschrift Paul Koschaker (Weimar 1939) II 1ff.; Kaser, M., Das altrömische Ius (Göttingen 1949) 290; Das römische Privatrecht (Munich 1955) 162; Santa Cruz Teijeiro, J., La Fides (Valencia 1949). See also Wieacker, , op. cit. 257, and Pringheim's papers, referred to by Wieacker in n. 1.Google Scholar

25 Cf. Schulz, , Hist. 62ff.; Coing, H., in ZSSR 69 (1952) 29.Google Scholar

26 Cf. Wieacker, , in ZSSR 70 (1953) 93ff.Google Scholar

27 An example is the evolution that took place regarding the doctrine of specificatio; see Wieacker, , in Festschrift für Ernst Rabel (Tübingen 1954) II 279ff.Google Scholar

28 The evidence is found in Taubenschlag's, R. article in Studi in onore di Pietro Bonfante (Milan 1930) I 367ff., especially 402ff. for the time following the Const. Anton. For the survival of peregrine law, see the same author's paper in ZSSR 69 (1952) 102ff., especially 117ff.Google Scholar

29 But see also the interesting observations made by von Bolla, S., in Journ. of Jur. Papyr. 7–8 (1954) 149ff., especially 155f., who emphasizes the role played by the lack of exact knowledge of Roman principles on the part of drafters of instruments, on the one hand, and by conservative clinging to deeply rooted native customs, on the other.Google Scholar

30 A more detailed exposition of the above statements will be found in the volume of papers read at the Vienna Congress of Papyrology (1955).Google Scholar

31 Steinwenter, A., in Aegyptus 32 (1952).Google Scholar

32 Cf. also most recently Wieacker, , Vulgarismus und Klassizismus im Recht der Spätantike (Heidelberg 1955).Google Scholar

33 Attention should be called also to the contrast, justly stressed by Archi, G. G., in Riv. Ital. per le Sc. Giurid. (1951) 220ff., which is apparent, in Justinian's own legislative effort, between the theoretical interests pursued by the learned compilers of the Digest and Institutes and the practical and often unsystematic approach prevalent in the compilation of the Code and in many of Justinian's own constitutiones and Nouellae. See, however, Wieacker's objection (op. cit. 57 n. 202) to Archi.Google Scholar