Міжнародні відносини: теоретико-практичні аспекти (May 2018)

ROMAN LAW AS INTERPRETATION DIRECTIVE IN DECISIONES LITUANICAE BY PETER ROZYUS

  • Marzena Dyjakowska

DOI
https://doi.org/10.31866/2616-745x.2.2018.133347
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 0, no. 2
pp. 173 – 182

Abstract

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The purpose of the article is to show that Peter Rozyus, the judge of the Royal Arbitration Court in Vilnius, applied Roman law as a interpretation criterion in relation to Magdeburg law. A Spanish Pedro Ruiz de Moroz, known in Poland under the Latin name of Royzius, is an example of the Renaissance scholar, who, due to his knowledge of Roman law, the basis of the European judicial culture of those times, successfully served as a King’s advisor and completed justice in Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The Roman law was used to interpret the content of questionable concepts of the German law. The author was also a supporter of the Roman law additional application in cases with national laws gaps. His work entitled “Decisiones (...) de rebus in sacro auditorio Lituanico ex appellatione iudicatis” (Cracow, 1565) is a commentary to five court decisions. The decision basis was the Magdeburg law, but the author’s arguments were attributed to the Roman law and to the glossators and commentators’ works. Beginning his story with showing the addressing to the law institutes superiority over the founders, the author emphasized the importance of law knowledge, and especially the Roman one. Critically assessing this knowledge among the Polish people, it is suggested that those claiming the Polish to have their own rights and have no need in borrowing strange laws are wrong, since other European countries with their own rights are not ashamed to address to the Roman law in cases with having gaps or obscurity in native rights.

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