‘Legatus’ in Medieval Roman Law

Abstract

The legate and legation have long interested medievalists, the general focus being on papal legation approached by pontificate, by region, or by historical era. Although study has fluctuated over the years, the past decade has witnessed a renewed interest. This recent work underlines the subtlety and the complexity of medieval thought concerning both legation and the larger topic under which it may be subsumed, representation. Among recent students of papal legation is Professor Frances Underhill, who has inspected the administrative devices utilized by papal legates in England during the reign of Henry III. Of special interest is the work of Professor Richard Schmutz, who has examined the classification of legates by earlier students of papal representation and has found their categorization of legates wanting. Secular legation has received some notice as well. Professor Donald Queller, for example, has reaffirmed and expanded his earlier suggestions that legatine practices did not play a prominent role in developing secular diplomacy and that there was a sharp legal distinction between ambassadorial nuncii and procuratores as regards legal volition and power. In addition, some attention has been directed lately to the problem of legal terminology and to the place that terminology has in descriptions of power and in descriptions of the transfer of power. Most of these legatine studies discuss to a greater or lesser degree both the theory and the practice of legation. Many consider, however cursorily, the possible influences which Roman practices and Roman legal theory may have had both on the theory and on the practice of papal and secular legation in medieval Western Europe. Yet none has taken up in detail either the character of the legate or the theory of legation in medieval Roman law. It is accordingly the purpose of this paper to analyze legatus both in the Corpus Iuris Civilis and in Accursius' synthesis of legistic opinion and interpretation, the Glossa ordinaria.