Encyclopedia of Early Modern History Online

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 authorities, such as the collection of taxes. …

See Legisprudence

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 curr…

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 …

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 ap…

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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…

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“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 …

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…

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