Was Rome still a Centre of Legal Culture between the 6th and 8th Centuries? Chasing the Manuscripts

What happened of the enormous heritage of juridical knowledge left in Italy in the 6th century? Through what labyrinths it re-emerged at full light, after the silent age of the early Middle Ages, determining the renewal of the jurisprudence at the beginning of the 12th century? One and a half century after the fanciful writings of Hermann Fitting, legal historians are still looking for the answers to these questions. Considering the new information we have (especially those that come from the paleographical research), this paper investigates once more the existence and the real activity of the school of Rome during the Justinian age and in the two centuries afterwards. The aim is to verify whether Rome, during the very early Middle Ages, continued to represent a reference centre for juridical culture. According to the hypothesis developed in these pages, Rome played a very important role in that ages not only with regard to the material conservation of the Justinian’s libri legales, but also in the first settlement of the new (i.e. Justinian) imperial law in the West and in the creation of an original perception of its significance. Without such settlement roots and perception, the Bolognese renovatio would really appear as a ‘miracle’ difficult to explain. After Justinian, the seventh and eighth centuries are truly the silent in the history of Roman law in the West. However, by studying the medieval manuscript tradition, in particular that of the Institutiones and of the Novellae, we can gather a series of elements that help us to clarify. Very useful it is also the examination of the manuscript tradition of the Collatio legum Mosaicarum et Romanarum. Through the spread and use of this late-antique works, we can see how – under the action of the papacy – Rome returned to being at the end of the 8th century a centre of the world politics and – since the law follows the politics – of the legal culture.