'When lawyers dreamt of Rome' : how nostalgia shaped the second life of Roman law

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Dodd, Leslie and Brown, Jonathan; Moss, Rachel E. and Roche, Helen and Meisl, Ricarda, eds. (2026) 'When lawyers dreamt of Rome' : how nostalgia shaped the second life of Roman law. In: Political Nostalgias. Arc Humanities Press, York. ISBN 9781802703641 (In Press)

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Abstract

The Corpus iuris civilis was enacted into law in 534 at the order of the emperor Justinian. It was not, however, until these texts were ‘rediscovered’ in the 11th century that the so-called ‘second life’ of Roman law began. Initially, this started as a principally pragmatic affair. In the emergent universities, legal academics utilised the texts of the Corpus for their didactic value. In turn, this meant that those legal practitioners intellectually trained in the universities came to draw on the familiar Roman texts as sources for their quotidian practice. Over time, the Corpus became a cultural touchstone for European jurists, the vanguard of late medieval Europe’s emergent, educated, urban middle-class. Roman law, in effect, became a window into an imagined Roman republican past which served as an antidote to Europe’s chivalric culture and the political system it upheld. For this reason, Roman law and the lawyers who promoted it (and its perceived ideological message) were sometimes construed as threats to established systems of sovereignty. This chapter considers how the Corpus was adapted to suit political agendas and how the political authorities responded to what, at times, appeared to be an usurpation of princely authority by a long-dead emperor. Ultimately, the chapter demonstrates that the reception of Roman law in the West was reshaped by the desires, anxieties, and ideological projects of those who sought to resurrect it; the ‘second life’ of Roman law was not simply a return to ancient jurisprudence, but a reinvention steeped in historical longing, intellectual aspiration and political ambition.

ORCID iDs

Dodd, Leslie and Brown, Jonathan ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9198-9672; Moss, Rachel E., Roche, Helen and Meisl, Ricarda
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)