The significance of these courts has sometimes been missed. They arose, however, out of the justice loving spirit of the people themselves and were meant to supply legal enforcements when the regularly constituted authorities were unable to secure them. They remind one very much of the vigilance committees, which in our own country, in the cities of the distant West, bravely and with the admirable prudence of the race, have so often supplied the place of regular courts and have brought justice and order out of the chaos of lawlessness. The last place most people would expect their prototypes, however, would be here in the Germany of the Thirteenth Century. How much these Vehmgerichte accomplished during the Thirteenth and Fourteenth centuries it would be difficult to say. They represent an outgrowth of the spirit of the people themselves, that constitutes another striking feature of the practical side of the generations of the Thirteenth Century. They had much more to do with bringing about the development of the modern acute sense of justice among the Teutonic peoples [{369}] than is usually thought. They are the German expression of the same feelings that in England dictated trial by jury, and secured for the English speaking people of all time the precious privileges of even-handed justice and the right to be judged by one's peers.
It was not alone in the western countries of Europe that great advances were made in liberty. The democratic spirit that was abroad made itself felt everywhere and the foundations of rights for the people were laid even in central Europe, in countries which ordinarily are thought of at this time as scarcely more than emerging from barbarism. Hungary may be cited as an example. Andrew II. is usually set down by narrow-minded historians as having been entirely too visionary in his character, and the fact that he led the fifth Crusade, apparently even more fruitless than were most of the others, is supposed to be an additional proof of this. Even Duruy in his History of the Middle Ages says of him, "he organized a state of anarchy by decreeing his Golden Bull, that if the King should violate the privileges of the nobility, they should be permitted to resist him by force and such resistance should not be treated as rebellion." As a matter of fact, his people were thus granted a constitution more liberal even than that of Magna Charta, but containing quite similar provisions in many respects, and the curious historical analogy is heightened when we recall that at the two ends of civilized Europe these constitutions were given in the same decade. One cannot help but wonder whether the Saxon elements which were in both peoples, for many Saxon and Frisian colonists had been induced to settle in certain parts of Transylvania just half a century before, did not have much to do with this extremely interesting development in Hungary, so like the corresponding evolution of the democratic spirit among their western kinsfolk.
In Poland the development in law came a little later but evidently as the result of the same factors that were at work during the Thirteenth Century. Casimir the Great, who was born shortly after the close of the Thirteenth Century, gave wise laws to Poland which have constituted the basis of Polish law ever since. At this time Poland was one of the most important countries in Europe. Casimir, besides giving laws to [{370}] his people, also founded a university for them and in every way encouraged the development of such progress as would make his subjects intelligently realize their own rights and maintain them, apparently foreseeing that thus the King would be better able to strengthen himself against the many enemies that surrounded him in central Europe.
How much the great Popes of the century accomplished for the foundation and development of law, can only be appreciated by those who realize the extent of their contributions to the codification of canon law. It was the arrangement of this in definite shape that put the civil jurists of the time at work setting their house in order. Innocent III., who is deservedly called Pater Juris, devoted a great deal of his wonderful energy and genius to the arrangement of canon law. This placed for the first time the canon law on an absolutely sure footing and filled up many gaps that formerly existed. Gregory IX. commissioned his chaplain, the famous Raymond of Pennafort, who had been a professor of canon law in the University of Bologna, to codify all the decretals since the time of Gratian. This work was officially promulgated in 1234, four years of labor having been devoted to it. The laws are in the form of decisions pronounced in cases submitted to the Pope from all parts of Christendom, including many from the distant East and not a few from England and Scotland. Gregory's decretals were published in five books; a supplement under the name of the sixth book was published under Pope Boniface VIII. in 1298. In this for the first time abstract rules of law are laid down extracted from actual judgments. A compendium of Roman Law was added so as to approximate canon and civil procedure.
This gives the best possible idea of how deeply the popes and the authorities in canon law of the century were laying the foundations of canonical practise and procedure for all times. The origins of modern law are to be found here, and yet not, as might be anticipated because of the distance in time, in such a confused or unmanageable fashion that they are not worth while consulting, but on the contrary with such clarity and distinctness and with such orderly arrangement, that they have been the subjects of study on the part of distinguished [{371}] jurists for most of the centuries ever since, and have never lost their interest for the great lawyers and canonists, who prefer to know things from the foundation rather than accept them at second hand.
Some of the commentaries, or glosses as they were called, on canon law serve to give an excellent idea of the legal ability as well as the intellectual acumen of the canon lawyers of the century. The system of teaching was oral, and careful study was devoted to original authorities in law. Explanatory notes were added by the professors to their copies of the text. When later these texts were given out or lent for transcription, the notes were also copied, usually being written in the margin. After a time the commentary, however, proved to be, for students at least, as important as the text and so was transcribed by itself and was called an apparatus, that is a series of mechanical helps, as it were, to the understanding of the text.
Of the names of some of the most distinguished glossatores the memory has been carefully preserved because they produced so much effect on legal teaching. The gloss written on Gratian by Joannes Teutonicus (John the German), probably during the first decade of the Thirteenth Century, was revised and supplemented by Bartholomew of Brescia about the middle of the Thirteenth Century. Some ten years later Bernard of Parma wrote a commentary on the decretals of Gregory. All of these are important fundamental works in canon law, and they were of very great influence in bringing out the principles of law and showing the basis on which they were founded. It is almost needless to say that they aroused additional interest and made the subject much more easy of approach than it had been. The fact that all of these magnificent contributions to the science and literatures of law should have been made during our Thirteenth Century, serves only to emphasize the fact that everything that men touched during this period was sure to be illuminated by the practical genius of the time, and put into a form in which for many centuries it was to be appealed to as a model and an authority in its own line. How much of legal commentary writing there was besides these, can be readily understood from the fact that these represent the activity only of the University of Bologna [{372}] which was, it is true, the greatest of universities in its law department, but it must not be forgotten that many other universities throughout Europe also had distinguished professors of law at this time.
All this would seem to be of little interest for the secular law-making of the period, but it must not be forgotten that civil law was closely related to canon law at all times and that the development of canon law always meant a renewed evolution of the principles, and practise, and procedure of the civil law. In such countries as Scotland, indeed, the canon law formed the basis of the civil jurisprudence and its influence was felt even for centuries after the so-called reformation. On the other hand it must not be forgotten that the popes and the ecclesiastics helped to fight the battles of the middle and lower classes against the king and the nobility in practically every country in Europe. A very striking example of this is to be found in the life of that much misunderstood Pope Boniface VIII., the last pope of the century, who had received his legal training at Bologna, and who was one of the great jurists of his time. Circumstances differ so much, however, and obscure realities to such a degree, that at the present time we need the light of sympathetic interpretation to enable us to realize what Boniface accomplished.
