Rothari, Edict of

ROTHARI, EDICT OF. - The first collection of customs and judicial usages (cavari fidae) of the Lombards. It marks the abandonment of oral law, allows us to assess the initial 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 the now-achieved affirmation of royal supremacy over the barbarian assembly.

The Edict, published from the palatium of Pavia on 22 Nov. 643, according to official texts compiled in the royal Chancery with the authentication of the notary Ansoald, constituted the sole law of the Kingdom to be cited in the placita. A legislative monument of original character (Leicht), whose general structure appears derived from Roman law (Paradisi), while the Germanic norms form its most characteristic, if not also its most vital, part (Besta), it shows repetitions, cross-references or contradictions already attributed to a hasty drafting, but perhaps due to two different redactions or to the uncoordinated work of various scribes. It is distinguished from earlier barbarian compilations already by the title of Edictum dispositionis regiae. This title, apparently more modest and improper, was imposed on it by R. (as rex and not imperial magistrate) either out of political prudence toward the Romans and Byzantines living in the regnum who were not its addressees, or because the Roman scribes remained faithful to classical terminology, or for diplomatic expediency toward the distant Emperor and the nearby Pontiff. But it has also been supposed to be due to the tradition of the Theodorician Edict in Italy, or to the character of autonomous legislation that the Edict had among the Germanic and Italic populations. The King wished preventively to correct the law so that it might renew and amend all previous ones (as in Justinian's Nov. 7), while in the epilogue he affirmed that he had composed it by inquiring into and recalling the ancient laws of the fathers which had not been written. Since the version of the codices Cavense and Vaticano published by Baudi di Vesme (Turin 1845): - quam priores homines renovent et emendent... - that is, the principes successors or the dignitaries of the Kingdom, rather than the earlier laws - is today rejected (Bluhme, Padelletti), the problem remains open. A substantial truth in the two contrasting parts has been believed admissible, on grounds of a technical character (Besta), or else two different moments between prologue and epilogue have been posited (Bognetti), along with two editions of the Edict and previous royal laws alongside the customs (Paradisi). The other theses regard prologue and epilogue as merely a literal copy of previous models and the Edict as a collection of norms already handed down orally (Calisse), rejecting as inconclusive the attempts at reconciliation (Calasso). The Edict is in a simple and intelligible form, despite the low cultural level of the era, but it does not yet succeed in grouping the special norms under the general one, nor the individual chapters under collective rubrics. In order not to limit future developments, Rotari admitted for himself and his successors additions and integrations: already the chapters of Grimoald mitigated what in the Edict appeared, at twenty-five years' distance, inhumanum et impium: to these were then added the chapters of Liutprand, the first Catholic king, who accentuated sovereign power and brought about a broader Roman and Christian influence; those of Ratchis; those of Aistulf, who wished in the prologue to justify and defend the most recent Lombard conquests with the principle, taken from ecclesiastical sources, of a traditio divina, but brought about with the Frankish intervention the beginning of the political decline of his people and unconsciously concluded in his chapters the legislation of the Lombard kings. The extension of the Edict to the new Roman subjects seems to aim at that unification between victors and vanquished which perhaps, in the ambitious designs of Aistulf and Desiderius, would have favored the dominion of all Italy and a Lombard renovatio imperii, while the Edict itself testifies to the slow but unstoppable progress of Roman law and of Christianity in bending the primitive barbarian customs to civilization.

Fulvio Crosara