Germanic or Roman? Western European Narratives of Legal Origins

Abstract

For many centuries, the question whether law was Germanic or Roman in origins preoccupied jurists throughout Western Europe. Rather than assuming convergence, entanglements, and mixing, as would often be the case today, from the 17th and into the 20th century, these jurists set out to prove that their countries (France, England, German territories, and Spain) were of Germanic rather than Romanic legal tradition. Studying these pan-European debates, but centering the attention mainly on Spain, the aim is to answer the question what do narratives of legal origins reveal about the law as well as about identities. Despite their local reiteration, can these pan-European conversations contribute to the elaboration of a European rather than a national legal history?

Keywords

• roman law
• germanic law
• spain
• customary law