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Not new but novel. Notes on the historiography of Byzantine law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2016

Bernard H. Stolte
Bernard H. Stolte*
Affiliation:
University of Groningen, Faculty of Law
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Extract

It is some time since the late Alexander Kazhdan undertook a private crusade under the title ‘Do we need a new history of Byzantine law?’ Of course his answer was in the affirmative. In one sense one would be unable to disagree; in another sense, however, one ought to answer that the history Kazhdan was asking for would not so much be new; rather it would be a novelty, as it had not been written before.

Type
Critical Studies
Information
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies , Volume 22 , 1998 , pp. 264 - 279
Copyright
Copyright © The Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham 1998

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References

1. Paper first given in Frankfurt am Main in 1981 and eventually published in JÖB 39 (1989) 1–28.

2. See, e.g., pp. 3–4: ‘The legal texts are the law itself … [a] position shared by a number, probably the vast majority, of the scholars of Byzantine law’; p. 9: ‘those who think the legal text is the reality’.

3. See on this, e.g., Cameron, A., Use & Abuse of Byzantium (inaugural lecture, King’s College, London 1992 Google Scholar; repr. in ead., Changing Cultures in Early Byzantium [Aldershot 1996] no. xiii).

4. There are several surveys of the history of the law of Europe from this perspective. The English-speaking reader may be referred to, e.g., Robinson, O.F., Fergus, T.D., Gordon, W.M., European Legal History: Sources and Institutions (London 1994)Google Scholar; Wieacker, F., A History of Private Law in Europe, transl. Weir, T. (Oxford 1995).Google Scholar

5. Troje, H.E., Graeca leguntur. Die Aneignung des byzantinischen Rechts und die Entstehung eines humanistischen Corpus iuris (Forschungen zur neueren Privatrechtsgeschichte 18, Cologne-Vienna 1971).Google Scholar

6. The outline of this process of translating and commenting may be found in any modern history of the sources of late Roman and early Byzantine law; see, e.g., Lokin, N. van der Wal-J.H.A., Historiae iuris graeco-romani delineatio. Les sources du droit byzantin de 300 à 1453 (Groningen 1985)Google Scholar chs. 3 and 4, and, more extensively, Pieler, P.E., ‘Byzantinische Rechtsliteratur’, in: Hunger, H. (ed.), Die hochsprachliche profane Literatur der Byzantiner, II (Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaft XII.5.2, Munich 1978), 341–480 Google Scholar, esp. 400–428.

7. Momigliano, A., ‘Le conseguenze del rinnovamento della storia dei diritti antichi’ [lecture delivered originally in 1963], in idem, Sui fondamenti della storia antica (Torino 1984) 185–203.Google Scholar

8. A point well made by Momigliano, , ‘Le conseguenze’ (188–189).Google Scholar

9. That is not to say that it is unimportant: obviously there is a connection with a conscious (re)adoption of Byzantium’s cultural past, namely the Justinianic age and perhaps ‘classical’ antiquity in general.

10. Simon, D., Rechtsfìndung am byzantinìschen Reichsgericht (=Wissenschaft und Gegenwart, Juristische Reihe 4, Frankfurt/Main 1973)Google Scholar; Greek transl, by Konidares, I.M. (Athens 1982).Google Scholar

11. Kazhdan’s treatment of the Peira is flawed in another respect, too. Drawing on one of his earlier papers he maintains, in order to show that Byzantine law developed, that ‘the use of the Basilica in the Peira was selective’; certain parts of the Basilica ‘were barely employed’, which presumably should be taken as a sign of a change in the law. Not only does this suggest that all parts of a law are initially used in equal measure, which is nonsense, but more serious, it passes over the question of the competence of a court. Surely one should first ascertain for what type of cases the Court of the Hippodrome was competent before one can comment on the type of law applied by that court? In fact Kazhdan is making the same point himself when stating that the canonists will use different parts of the Basilica (p. 9).

12. ‘Das Ehegüterrecht der Pira’, Fontes Minores 7 (1986) 193–238. On the law of matrimonial property see also Simon, D. (ed.), Eherecht una Familiengut in Antike und Mittelalter (Schriften des Historischen Kollegs. Kolloquien 22, Munich 1992).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13. Simon’s own analysis may be different; see his statement in Ehegüterrecht, 195, no. 5: ‘Die Gesichtspunkte “totale Kauistik”, “fehlende Dogmatik” etc. scheinen mir auch heute noch richtig, wenngleich vertiefter Erläuterung zugänglich.’

14. Oikonomidès, N., ‘The “Peira” of Eustathios Rhomaois. An Abortive Attempt to Innovate in Byzantine Law’, Fontes Minores 7 (1986), 169–192 (191).Google Scholar