ROMAN UDINESE LAW. — So called because its copy was found by Canciani in a codex of the Chapter Library of Udine. Subsequently, when other codices of the same law were discovered in the Swiss monastery of S. Gallo, it was held that the law derived from Cora, ancient Curia Raetica, whence also the name attributed to the law, Lex Romana Rhaetico-Curiensis.
It is a derivation of the Breviarium Alaricianum (v. ALBERICO DI REIMS), but is partly independent of it; the chapters of the Breviarium are there furnished with the interpretatio.
Schupfer firmly maintained that the homeland of the l. r. u. was Italy, but the Theodosian text of which it is woven, the complete absence of any admixture of Lombard law, and the feudal characteristics revealed in it would tend to rule this out. It is used in the chapters of Bishop Remedius, and the geographical and political environment it describes would place the site of its composition in France around the ninth century (see, however, against this Ferrini, cited in the bibliography).
Of interest in it is the mention of the iudex privatus qui actor Ecclesiarum est, alongside the iudex publicus; the actor Ecclesiarum would have been the administrator of large ecclesiastical landed possessions endowed with jurisdiction; but this institution was introduced in France even before Charlemagne, whereas in Italy it appeared much later.