[20] Heitland, op. cit. sec. 993.
[21] Kent, Commentaries, Holmes, Editor, 12th Edition, 4 Vols., Boston, 1893, i, 95.
[22] de Coulanges, op. cit. 293.
[23] Wheaton, History of the Law of Nations, p. 25.
[CHAPTER II. DURING THE MIDDLE AGES.]
[PART 1. MARITIME CODES.]
"In the dark ages, between 476 and 800 A.D. International law reached its nadir in the West".[1] Private war, on land and piracy at sea were unrestrained. There were of course no laws providing for the division of prize money.
By the eleventh and twelfth centuries many cities of the Mediterranean and North seas had become powerful commercially and issued laws for determining maritime affairs. Such were the Amalfitan Tables, the Judgments or Roles of Oleron, the Laws of Wisby, and the Consolato del Mare originating in Barcelona.[2] As these laws simply stated the universal customs of the sea it came about that all maritime towns would adopt one of these codes.[3] Thus by the fifteenth century the Consolato del Mare was recognized maritime law in most of the commercial cities of the Mediterranean[4] while the Judgments of Oleron were in a similar way recognized by the towns of the North Sea.[5] These laws were intended primarily to regulate the private relations of mariners, owners and merchants, but on account of the necessity of protection from pirates many of them also included laws of maritime war and prize. State organization had not developed sufficiently to afford protection to merchants on the sea, consequently the merchants themselves formed protective organizations, furnished armed cruisers for making prizes and established consulates for judging maritime cases and for enforcing the definite codes of maritime law.[6]