Encyclopedia of Early Modern History Online

1. ConceptFrom the beginning, the lecture as a form of instruction was closely associated with the institutions of higher education (Bildung: universities, gymnasia illustria, Fürstenschulen, knight academies), and to this day it remains a key method of conveying knowledge in academic contexts. In Germany and most of Europe, it was and still is generally reserved for fully qualified graduate teachers of the academic rank of Professor (American ‘full professor’).The Latin term lectio used in premodern times resulted from the form of communication of frontal instr…

In early modern German,  Ledige (“single, unmarried”) was a specialized collective term for the unmarried youth of a location, especially in rural communities (still common in the 20th century in southern German villages) [5. 76]. In everyday use, it referred primarily to the totality of unmarried male young people (alongside other regional terms like  Buben [1. 459], Burschen [2. 548], Knaben[3. 1313], and  Knechte [4. 1381] in German-speaking areas; also French garçons and varlets or Italian  garzóni). That we are dealing with a term for youth groups is shown…

See Marriage, morganatic

See Inheritance law | Will (testament)

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See Person

1. Definition Legal certainty (French  sécurité juridique; German  Rechtssicherheit) is understood today to be the constitutional principle of the dependability of a legal order; it thus is a fundamental part of the overarching concept of the rule of law. Today this principle is observed in many European states [13. 543–636][5. 543–636]. Legal certainty has been and continues to be used today generally as an argument in legislation and as a reference point both in the application of law and in jurisprudence. A broad prohibition of retroactive …

See Trial procedure

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1. DefinitionLegal enforcement is the process whereby civil claims (Private law), especially debts, are enforced. Enforcement is predicated on a valid judicial decision under civil procedure. Enforcement during the early modern period was characterized by the repression of private self-help in favor of the execution of rulings by state authority. States (Sovereign power) made use of legal enforcement not only to help creditors obtain their rights, but also to pursue their own interests. On the on…

1. Definition The concept of legal force derives from procedural law (Trial procedure) and describes the effect of judicial rulings (Judgment) and official decisions. A distinction is drawn between formal and material legal force. The former term is used when a decision can no longer be challenged by an ordinary legal remedy or a time-limited form of legal redress. If this formal legal force applies, then material legal force determines that a decision regarding a contested claim is als…

1. DefinitionThe history of law, on the one hand, may be understood as the history of culturally influenced legal norms and their application; on the other hand, the history of law (or legal history) designates the subdiscipline of jurisprudence and history (intellectual discipline) dedicated to the history of these norms, including their cultural, political, economic, and social contexts. The history of law in the latter sense can be subdivided according to areas of law (e.g. the history of priv…

1. Definition and disseminationLegal literature is a form of specialized and technical literature. It is focused on legal practice, jurisprudence, and students of this field. Legal literature on legal practice contains solutions of specific cases; that addressed to scholars and students focuses on the development of doctrine and the transmission of knowledge. The historical distribution of legal literature was closely related to the transformation of book production. The introduction of printing with movable type around the middle of …

See Consilia | Transmissio actorum

1. DefinitionThe concept of legal positivism describes a current of the philosophy or theory of law that derives the concept and reason for the validity of law purely from its authorized ratification. This formal legal concept is characterized by its neutrality with respect to the substance of law: the quality and validity of a legal norm depends solely on the fact that it has been created in accordance with established legislative rules; it is irrelevant whether its content conforms to certain v…

See Civil procedure | Criminal procedure | Kameralprozess | Trial procedure

1. Definition A legal remedy (Latin  remedium iuris, remedium contra sententias; French  voie de recours; German  Rechtsmittel) enables a party in a trial before a court of law to dispute a judgment; if a legal remedy is utilized, a higher instance reviews and decides the case anew. In broader usage until around the year 1850, a legal remedy covered all means of protecting or enforcing one’s rights, including lawsuits, appeals, complaints, petitions, and acts of restoration to a previous state. As a rule, but not necessarily, a legal remedy is utilized in a court of law.Martin Otto2. T…

See Jurisprudence | Natural law

See Jurist | Law, faculty of

See Legal unity

Legal unity describes that state when the same law is in force in one or more territories. Broad parts of early modern Europe enjoyed relative legal unity by virtue of the tradition of medieval  ius commune [1]. This law had emerged from the integration of Roman and canon law, leading to the creation of a legal culture that spanned western and central Europe, including England (Common law) [7].The reception of ius commune not only led to the spread of related legal rules across Europe, but also rationalized ways of using the law and established western jurisprude…

The term “legend” (German  Sage) emerged as a scholarly category around 1800 through the classification of heterogeneous, mostly written traditions. Before this, the word did not denote a literary genre, but simply a narrative of events (since the 17th century, especially implying fictitiousness). From the early 19th century, however, the term came to denote a piece of the supposedly oral so-called folk literature that was highly prized in Romanticism. Until this period, “legend” tended to be used synonymously with “fairy tale,” but the collection of  Deutsche Sagen (“German L…

1. Definition and function In every European country, leges fundamentales (Latin, “fundamental laws”) were the forerunners of the modern constitution; but only in some cases did they perform the same functions. Whereas a constitution organizes the powers of the state, guarantees individual rights, and stands above the general legal order, the plural form of  leges fundamentales shows that they were not a planned, uniform constitutional law, but rather a canon of individual texts relevant to constitutional matters. In the 18th century, super-positi…

1. Historical development 1.1. DefinitionLegislation (legislature) is one of the three classical functions of the state in addition to government and jurisdiction. This trio is the basis of the doctrine of the separation of powers (Powers, separation of) and so is of even earlier date. Since the Middle Ages, legislation as the creation of an entire legal order has differed from the application of law in individual cases by means of judgment and specific (administrative) measures enacted by authoriti…

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1. DefinitionLegisprudence, corresponding to the German field of  Legistik (the study of law, particularly Roman law) exists as a subdiscipline of legal history only in Germany and was coined in the 1970s to complement  Kanonistik, the study of canon law (Ecclesiastical law). Legisprudence focuses on the study of texts influenced by Roman law from the age of ius commune, which is called the era of Gemeines Recht in German terminology (13th–17th century). Legisprudence investigates the phenomenon from a historiographical perspective, not from that of law …

The term  legitimacy (modern Latin  legitimitas, primarily with reference to parentage and property) developed out of legal language toward the end of the 18th century; it denotes the “rightfulness” and consequent worthiness of being recognized and actual recognition of rulers and acts of authority as well as forms of government or the state. The political import of the related adjective (Latin  legitimus) began with the linkage of inheritance law and succession to authoritative office (Throne, succession to) in the Golden Bull of 1356. It increased as…

1. IntroductionThrough legitimation and adoption, children born out of wedlock could obtain the status of legitimate children. In the early modern period, legitimation was particularly common by way of subsequent marriage (Latin  per matrimonium subsequens; see section 2, below) and legitimation by sovereign act ( per rescriptum principis; see section 3, below). Both have their roots in Roman law, but had already been substantially influenced by canon law (Ecclesiastical law) and particular law by the dawn of the early modern period [10. 130]; [7. 69]; [8. 94]; [4. 408 f.].The ne…

1. DefinitionLegitimism was a response of monarchy to its fall from power and delegitimation occasioned by revolution and the Napoleonic period: a theory of royal authority based on Christian theology in a period of secular upheaval; in this sense, it was a historical paradox. Like conservatism, which it was part of, it was a post-revolutionary construct, an ideology of continuity at a time when the historical continuum had been shattered. Legitimism was a product of the French Revolution (1789),…

Legumes (Latin  leguminosae) are the third most abundant plant group in the world, and of them, the faboideae is the subfamily with the largest number of species, including clover [7. 97 f.]. High in protein and hence nutritious thanks to their facility of nitrogen fixing, legumes such as peas, lentils, and beans were an important component of the human diet in the Near East, Mediterranean, Central Europe, and South and Central America from the Mesolithic period (Food) [7. 101, 108 f., 124, 134 f., 137]; [6. 28, 37 f., 245 f.]. As a consequence of the European discovery of …

1. ConceptThe English “leisure” derives from the Old French leisir (cf. Modern French  loisir), meaning “freedom [to do something].” Latin otium (cf. Italian  ozio, Spanish  ocio) defined this freedom in contrast to business ( negotium), while German derived it from a divine influence, the German Muße sharing the derivation of  museum from the nine Muses who in Greco-Roman antiquity were worshipped as goddesses of song, knowledge, and memory [2] (Ancient religions; Mythology). Although these deities were little appreciated in the Middle Ages, the leisure t…

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“Lenten fare” denotes foodstuffs for which no fasting or abstinence rules prohibit consumption on obligatory church fast days. During the late Middle Ages, church fasting rules forbade the consumption of the meat of warm-blooded animals and their products (milk, cheese, butter, lard, eggs) on more than 150 days of the year. Unlike in the Greek Orthodox Church, however, these rules were eased from the 15th century by the issue of papal or episcopal dispensations (in Germany called Butterbriefe, “butter letters”). These sporadically permitted the consumption on certain fa…

1. IntroductionOn November 30, 1786, Grand Duke Peter Leopold, the brother of Emperor Joseph II, promulgated a criminal code for the territory of Tuscany that he ruled (a Habsburg secondogeniture since 1737) that was received as a sensation across Europe (Criminal law). The Riforma della legislazione criminale toscana, composed in the spirit of the Enlightenment, was his only work. The code was generally called the Leopoldina (or Codice leopoldino) after the grand duke, who deliberately distanced himself from his dynasty by taking the official name Pietro Leo…

See Leopoldina

“Lesbian” in its modern sense differs drastically from its meaning before 1850: “from the island of Lesbos” (the home of the poet Sappho). From the middle of the 18th century, relations between women increasingly became a subject of medical and legal discourses that sought in a controlling way to tie women into a heterosexual gender order (Gender roles), and that consistently biologized female sexuality. The term “Lesbianism” is first attested in its contemporary sense from 1870, and in German the expression  lesbische Liebe (“Lesbian love”) dates from the late 18th century [5].…

1. Definition and origins In general under early modern law, lèse-majesté was understood as encompassing every and any injury (Iniuria) to a monarch. It did not emerge as an offense with distinct elements that separated it from political offenses (Criminal offense) until the mid-19th century. Until the end of the 18th century, this violation of honor was understood as a form of a comprehensive crime of lèse-majesté.In the German-speaking lands, the crime derived, on the one hand, from the Roman crimen laesae maiestatis (“lèse-majesté”; cf. Ius commune) and, on the other, fro…

See Prayer | Sermon | Worship

1. Genre history 1.1. Genre and mediumThe letter is an individually addressed, written communication that is usually sent sealed. As an elementary form of interaction-free communication, it is characterized by the separation of the communication from the concrete situational context and the alternating absence of the reader during writing and the writer during reading. “Letter” is attested in English since the 13th century, derived from the Latin  littera (“written document,” “epistle”) via Old French. Another Latin derivation is found in the German  Brief, from the Vulgar…

A  lettre de cachet (French, “signet letter”) in French law was a special form of royal order. In contrast to public lettres de patentes, which were signed by the chancellor and confirmed with the great seal, lettres de cachet were signed by the secretary of state, and sometimes the king, and stamped with the small seal ( cachet) of the king (hence also known as lettres de petit signet or de petit cachet). First mentioned in 1560 ( Ordonnance d'Orléans, art. 91), they were first used more frequently under Richelieu, peaking at around 23,000 letters between 1741 and 1775 [3. 17].A lettre de c…

1. Introduction The Levant trade is defined as the trading relations between Central and Western Europe and the Levant (from the Italian  levante, “rising [sun],” i.e. the east) – the regions of the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East (Mediterranean world). Ever since the first edition of Wilhelm Heyd’s Geschichte des Levantehandels (1858), there has been an abundant and uninterrupted tradition of research on the Levant trade [7].From the Roman Imperial period, merchants obtained goods from the Orient and Far East, in particular spices by sea (Persian…

1. Origin in the French RevolutionThe French Revolution (1789) introduced the  levée en masse (“mass conscription”) in response to diplomatic and military crises in the spring of 1793. To meet the onslaught of the coalition army, in February of 1793 the National Convention had already approved conscription of 300,000 soldiers, but had been unable to recruit the necessary number of additional men at arms for the line troops. Against the background of the internal and external political crisis, which had bee…

See Services, peasant | Tax

See Ius curiae

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See Paddock-system