ROTARI, EDICT OF. – The first collection of the customs and judicial usages (cavari fidae) of the Lombards. It marks the abandonment of oral law, makes it possible to assess the initially limited but already important influence of Roman civilization (use of the Latin language, knowledge of the Theodosian and Justinian Codes, of the Institutes and Novels), demonstrates the influence of Christianity, and finally attests to the already achieved assertion of royal supremacy over the barbarian assembly.
The Edict, published from the palatium of Pavia on 22 November 643, according to official texts compiled in the royal Chancery and authenticated by the notary Ansoald, constituted the sole law of the Kingdom to be appended to the placita. A legislative monument of an original character (Leicht), whose general structure appears to derive from Roman law (Paradisi), while Germanic norms form its most characteristic, if not also its most vital, part (Besta), it displays repetitions, cross-references, or contradictions that have already been attributed to hurried drafting, but which may perhaps be due to two different redactions or to the uncoordinated work of various scribes. It differs from the earlier barbarian compilations from its very title, Edictum dispositionis regine. This title, apparently more modest and inappropriate, was imposed upon it by R. (as rex and not as an imperial magistrate), either out of political prudence toward the Romans and Byzantines living in the regnum, who were not its intended subjects, or because the Roman scribes remained faithful to classical terminology, or for diplomatic convenience toward the distant Emperor and the neighboring Pontiff. It has also been supposed that the title derived from the tradition of the Theodorician Edict in Italy, or from the character of autonomous legislation that the Edict possessed among the Germanic and Italian populations. The King wished preventem corregere legem que priores omnes renovet et emendet (as in Justinian’s Nov. 7), while in the epilogue he asserted that he had composed it inquiring into and recalling the ancient laws of the fathers that had not been written down. Since the version of the Cavense and Vatican codices published by Baudi di Vesme (Turin 1845): – quam priores homines renovent et emendent... – that is, the principes successores or dignitaries of the Kingdom, rather than the earlier laws – is now rejected (Bluhme, Padelletti), the problem remains open. A substantial truth in the two conflicting passages has been deemed admissible on the basis of technical considerations (Besta); alternatively, it has been suggested that there were two different periods separating the prologue from the epilogue (Bognetti), two editions of the Edict, and earlier royal laws alongside the customs (Paradisi). Other theories regard the prologue and epilogue merely as literal copies of earlier models and the Edict as a collection of norms already transmitted orally (Calisse), rejecting the attempts at reconciliation as inconclusive (Calasso). The Edict is expressed in a simple and intelligible form, despite the low cultural level of the period, but it does not yet succeed in grouping the special norms under a general one, nor the individual chapters under collective rubrics. In order not to limit future developments, Rotari allowed himself and his successors to make additions and supplements: already the chapters of Grimoald mitigated what in the Edict, twenty-five years later, appeared inhumanum et impium; these were then followed by the chapters of Liutprand, the first Catholic king, who strengthened sovereign power and brought about a broader Roman and Christian influence; by those of Ratchis; and by those of Astolf, who in the prologue sought to justify and defend the more recent Lombard conquests through the principle, taken from ecclesiastical sources, of a traditio divina, but whose intervention with the Franks marked the beginning of his people’s political decline and unconsciously brought the legislation of the Lombard kings to its conclusion in his chapters. The extension of the Edict to the new Roman subjects seems to have aimed at that unification of conquerors and conquered which perhaps, in the ambitious designs of Astolf and Desiderius, would have favored dominion over all Italy and a Lombard renovatio imperii, while the Edict itself bears witness to the slow but unstoppable progress of Roman law and Christianity in bending the primitive barbarian usages to civilization.
BIRL.: the most authoritative edition is that of F. Bluhme, in MGH, Leges, IV, pp. 1–206. Readings: T. De Sartori Montecroce, Corso di stor. del diritto publ. german., Trento–Venice 1908, pp. 96–99; N. Tamassia, Storia delle fonti dall'eid romana ai tempi nostri, Padua 1928; C. Calisse, Stor. del diritto ital., Le fonti, Florence 1930, pp. 32–39; A. Solmi, Stor. del diritto ital., Milan 1930, pp. 132–36; G. Salvioli, Stor. del diritto ital., Turin 1930, p. 36 ff.; G. P. Bogneti, Longobardi e Romasi, in Studi Besta, IV, Milan 1930, pp. 353–410; P. S. Leicht, Stor. del diritto ital., Le fonti, there 1947, p. 42 ff.; Il diritto pubblico, there 1950, p. 75; F. Calasso, Lezioni di stor. del diritto ital., le fonti del diritto, Milan 1948, pp. 81–91; B. Paradisi, Stor. del dir. ital., le fonti nel basso Impero e nell'epoca romano-barbarica, Naples 1951, pp. 288–301; E. Besta, Le fonti dell'E. di R., in Atti del I Congr. intern. di studi longobardi, Spoleto [1952], pp. 51–69. Fulvio Crosara