Liber Iudiciorum

Resumo: Este estudo, cujo objetivo é apresentar alguns fatos e características do Código Visigótico, foi realizado a partir da leitura de textos de especialistas e das fontes primárias. Primeiramente, é feita uma breve contextualização histórica dos visigodos e das leis que antecederam o Código Visigótico para ajudar o leitor. Em seguida, a estrutura do Código é analisada bem como o contexto político em que ele foi promulgado e tecem-se então algumas considerações finais. Palavras-chave: Direito visigótico. Código visigótico. Liber Iudiciorum. Fuero Juzgo.

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to present some facts and features of the Visigothic Code and it was based on the study of the specialized literature and the primary sources. First, an overview of the Visigoths is provided alongside with a brief description of the law and legislation that were produced before the Visigothic Code so that the historical context is known to the reader. Then, the structure of the code is analyzed as well as the political context in which it was promulgated, and some closing remarks are made.

Originalmente publicado em: Portal Jurídico Investidura, ISSN 2318-1664, Florianópolis/SC, 29 Mar. 2018. Disponível em: investidura.com.br/biblioteca-juridica/artigos/historia-dodireito/336534-o-liber-iudiciorum-e-o-direito-visigotico

During the Visigothic period Hispanic cities entered a process of gradual transformation, by which the old Roman citizen schemes, maintained throughout the fifth century, were collapsing, replaced by new concepts, based on the new spiritual frameworks that foreshadow the medieval Christian world. Visigothic legislation can easily follow this process, since the transition from antiquae society to the laws of the 7th century coincides to a large extent with this process of "spiritual de-urbanization" of society. But this should not be understood as the elimination of cities as material reality, which will continue to exist without a solution of continuity until the Muslim period, but as the disappearance of the city as the basis of the ideological and spiritual structure, being reduced to an aspect of territorial admisitration and, on a more limited scale than in Late Roman times, an economic and social center value.

Lex Visigothorum (Liber Iudiciorum). Textum latinum. Interpretatio rossica. Studia.
Вестготская Правда (Книга Приговоров). Латинский текст. Перевод. Исследование, dir.
O. V. Aurov, A. V. Marey, Moscú, Русский Фонд Содействия Образованию и Науке, 2012
(Исторические источники), 944 págs., ISBN: 978-5-91244-069-4.

The anonymous nature of many of the antiquae laws in the Liber Iudiciorum is probably the result of a damnatio memoriae of arian kings by the compilers of the code. Its first promulgation in 654 took place in a context of opposition from Recceswinth to his recently deceased father. Being partially retroactive, the Liber allows to revoke charters and judgments issued during Chindaswinth's reign, an actorum rescissio which could also arise from a damnatio memoriae of some sort. Although the Liber unquestionably possesses a practical function, it therefore holds a strong ideological value too as a tool to designate good and bad kings. Recceswinth wanted it to be the only source of law used by judicial courts, but the Liber is neither exhaustive nor totally coherent, for number of laws were issued on a casuistical basis. The lack of attention to the Liber's gaps led many historians to believe erroneously that Wamba's militar law (LV IX, 2, 8) was abrogated by Ervig's (LV IX, 2, 9); as a matter of fact, both laws collected in the Liber were concurrently valid.

RESUMEN Este trabajo trata de seguir la evolución del concepto de exsilium como pena judicial y penal a lo largo del periodo visigodo, que cambia de sentido y signifi cado paralelamente a la gene-ralización de la antropología monástica en ese periodo y a la progresiva fusión de los ámbitos terrenal y espiritual en la sociedad hispanogoda. El exsilium se convierte así en una reclusión de tipo penitencial en un monasterio. Ese cambio se produce en dos etapas: — Adopción por parte de los legisladores de un castigo eclesiástico, la reclusión en un monasterio, como pena judicial sobre laicos, a mediados del siglo VI. — Adopción por parte de los legisladores eclesiásticos de un término judicial vacío de sentido en el mundo monástico, el exsilium, para referirse a la reclusión penitencial en un monasterio. ABSTRACT This work tries to follow the evolution of the concept of exsilium like judicial and penal penalty throughout the visigoth period, that parallelly changes of sense and meaning to the generalization of the monastic anthropology in that period and to the progressive joining of the contexts terrenal and spiritual in the hispanogothic society. The exsilium becomes thus an imprisonment of penitencial type in a monastery. That change takes place in two stages: — Adoption on the part of the legislators of an ecclesiastical punishment, the imprisonment in a monastery, like judicial pain on lay, in the middle of the 7 th century. — Adoption in the last quarter of 7 th century on the part of the ecclesiastical legislators of a senseless judicial term in the monastic world, the exsilium, to refer to the penitencial imprisonment in a monastery. Espacio y tiempo en la percepción de la Antigüedad Tardía Antig. crist. (Murcia) XXIII, 2006, págs. 515-529

In this article, we reevaluate the dating of the Laterculus regum Visigothorum, from a paleographical and textual analyze of its four earlier testimonies. We suppose that the list wasn't redacted for the first publication of the Liber Iudiciorum (654), but probably soon after Erwig's anointing (680).

Why has the Liber Iudiciorum (or, Lex Visigothorum), the grand legal-historical narrative of seventh-century Iberia, been categorized as Germanic? From where did this categorical ascription derive, why, and what are the consequences? The Liber Iudiciorum was constructed and issued in the middle of the Iberian Peninsula (in Toledo) by people born in that land, brought up with local culture, and who relied on a legal and literary tradition endemic to Iberian regions and the broader Mediterranean. Yet, the Liber Iudiciorum has been, over the course of four centuries, categorized as ‘Germanic’. In this presentation, I will demonstrate the figure-ground of this categorization – early modern political rhetoric, which established competing historiographies about the text’s meaning, purpose, and origins – and from that work to invalidate the rhetorical ‘Germanic’ claims and the dialectical ‘truth’ that transpired.

Most of the attendees of this conference (and readers of this abstract) will be familiar with the general historiography of early medieval law and literature, from the nineteenth-century forward, and understand, therefore, the constellation of modern(ist) nationalism, racism, philology, antiquarianism, the development of historical ‘science’ and ultimately fascism that cemented a ‘Germanic’ heritage for the Liber Iudiciorum. Some will also be well-versed in the history of the late modern poststructuralist (from Saussure) and then postmodernist turns, as they were taken-up by historical scholarship. During this moment, scholars employed new forms of reading and representing the early medieval Iberian past, which recognized the centrality of language to ‘facts’ and so identity. This led to novel ways of thinking about our abilities to ‘know’ the Visigothic texts and their meanings, and to challenge modernist claims about heritage. Yet, it stands that the latest edition – a product of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica – and the [effectively useless] translation of the Liber Iudiciorum – both more than a century old – and much of the scholarship on the code since, refer to it in problematic categorical ways. Today’s metamodernist scholars are reintroducing uncritical, a-theoretical objectivist truth claims, including ethnographic categories such as ‘Germanic’ (which would be ironic here, if one still saw historiography as a knowledge that builds upon itself).       

The romantic, modern origins of Germanicism may be evident to most scholars, thanks to recent work in the field. However, these origins were not the a priori product of the modern world and its classicized ethnography of the Early Middle Ages. This presentation will show that the ideas that forged them are rooted in historical acts of early modern scholars and their inaugural editions of the Liber Iudiciorum: Pierre Pithou’s Codicis legum Wisigothorum libri XII, printed in Paris by Sèbastien Nivèlle on the ides of March 1579; André Schott’s Hispania Illustratae, printed in Frankfurt by Claudium Marnium in 1606; and Friedrich Lindenbrog’s Codex Legum antiquarum, in quo continentur leges Wisigothorum, printed in Frankfurt by Iohannis and Andrea Marne in 1613 (the Madrid edition of 1600 will be noted separately in the talk). Pithou rightly created for the Liber Iudiciorum an Iberian heritage, which was followed in Britain well into the 1600s. Schott followed Pithou by further entrenching the narrative of Spanish origins (elaborated by the Madrid edition). The Lindenbrog edition was the first to cut from the existing Anglo-Belgian-French-Spanish tradition(s) by claiming explicitly that the Liber Iudiciorum was evidence of ‘the gloriousness of the Germans’, and should be published to provide further historical grounding for German greatness. From this would emerge the ahistoricizing dialectic that we (Visigothic scholars) are yet to fully overcome.