ROMAN LAW OF UDINE. — So called because the exemplar of it was found by Canziani in a codex of the Chapter Library of Udine. Subsequently, other codices of the same law were discovered in the Swiss monastery of St Gall, and it was then held that the law derived from Chur, the ancient Curia Raetica, whence also the name given to the law of Lex Romana Rhaetico-Curiensis.
It is a derivation of the Breviarium Alaricianum (v. ALARIC II), but in part 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 absence of any admixture of Lombard law, and the feudal characteristics revealed in it, would lead one to exclude Italy from consideration; and the geographical and political environment which it describes points to the 9th century (v. Ferrini, cited in bibliography).
Of interest in it is the mention of the index privatus who is the actor Ecclesiarum, alongside the index publicus; the actor Ecclesiarum would be the administrator of large ecclesiastical landed estates endowed with jurisdiction; but such an institution was introduced into France even before Charlemagne, whereas in Italy it appeared much later.