La 'Summa trium librorum'di Rolando da Lucca (1195-1234). Fisco, politica,'scientia iuris',(Ricerche dell'Istituto storico germanico di Roma, 8), Roma: Viella …

La 'Summa trium librorum'di Rolando da Lucca (1195-1234). Fisco, politica,'scientia iuris',(Ricerche dell'Istituto storico germanico di Roma, 8), Roma: Viella …内容摘要：

Emanuele Conte and Sara Menzinger (eds), La Summa Trium Librorum di Rolando da Lucca (1195– 1234). Fisco, politica, scientia iuris, Viella, 2012. Pp. CCLXIX + 570. € 70.00 (ISBN 978-8-88334498-5). It has long been accepted that Roman law provided the basis for the development of private law in the Western legal tradition. Accordingly, there is an abundant literature which tries to uncover the connections between provisions in the Digest, the Institutes and the Code of Emperor Justinian, on the one hand, and the modern codifications of private law, on the other, for instance regarding the principle of privity of contract (nemo alteri stipulari potest). However, much less attention has been paid so far to the reception of Roman law in matters of public law. Perhaps due to the lasting impact of nineteenth-century legal-historical scholarship and the assumption that public law is closely intertwined with national identity, surprisingly little effort has been made by comparativists to highlight the common, Roman roots of various public law institutions in contemporary jurisdictions. The volume under review is a timely invitation to question that view. It convincingly shows that the development of public administration and taxation in medieval Italian towns such as Lucca was driven to a large extent by the reception and adaptation of Roman legal texts. Books ten to twelve of Justinian’s Code in particular, the so-called tres libri Codicis, provided medieval jurists with an unparalleled source of inspiration for public government and finance. The role of Roman law in the development of late medieval public finance is approached in this book from the angle of the Summa trium librorum, a summary of the last three books of the Code, written by the Italian judge Rolando (c 1150–1234) from the town of Lucca. As a matter of fact, the main purpose of the book under review is to provide scholars with a critical edition of the text of Rolando’s Summa, which has been handed down to us through five manuscripts preserved in Madrid (Biblioteca Nacional), Montecassino (Archivio dell’Abbazia), Peralada (Biblioteca di Palau), Sankt Florian (Stiftsbibliothek) and Rome (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana). The volume contains a detailed description of each of these manuscripts by Valentina Longo and Sabina Magrini (ccxx–ccxli). Careful collation of the different manuscripts reveals that there are actually two versions of the Summa (ccxix). The second version of the text, which is most complete in the Sankt Florian manuscript, was enlarged 1 with textual fragments from Placentinus and Pillius, two medieval jurists who had also summarised the tres libri Codicis. The Sankt Florian manuscript was chosen as the starting point for the critical edition. In the edition of Emanuele Conte and Sara Menzinger, the Summa of Rolando consists of an impressive 570 pages, including a list of citations. This remarkable piece of philological scholarship, however, is preceded by no fewer than 250 pages investigating the historical context from which the Summa emerged. These preliminary investigations constitute a monograph on their own, which, for a wider audience, may turn out to be of even greater interest than the edition. It is subdivided into three large chapters, which, ideally, deserve to be translated into English soon. The first chapter, written by Emanuele Conte with the assistance of Veronica Bagnai Losacco and Frank Theisen, deals with the life and work of Rolando (xv–lxiv). In the second chapter, Emanuele Conte offers a general account of public law in the twelfth century and the role of the renaissance of Roman law in the construction of a public body and a civil soul (lxv–cxxiv). The last chapter, by Sara Menzinger (cxxv–ccxxviii), concentrates on the emergence of public law at the level of the medieval Italian towns, particularly as reflected in the work of Rolando and his contemporaries. Rolando was not just an early theoretician of public law or a political philosopher avant la lettre. As a judge and administrator he occupied major public offices in the town of Lucca. In fact, the beginning of his Summa mentions that he dedicated his work to the Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI (1191–7) in the hope of gaining economic benefits in return which would allow him to retire from the hustle and bustle of life in the courts (xxviii). As was typical of judges in medieval Tuscany, Rolando was cultivated and familiar with classical literature by virtue of his