Preliminary Data of Life and Health Insurance in the Roman Law

Abstract

With the explosion of insurance contracts in the last two hundred years both in Europe and around the rest of the world, there is a temptation to think that the financing and insuring on projects on limited or non-recourse terms is a relatively novel concept. This is, however, far from being true. Indeed, there is an early evidence of project financing techniques and insurance contracts being actively used during the ancient times. The first examples come from the Roman law but there are similar legal institutions even in the ancient Greek legal system. The essay analyses the legal history of assurances on lives and health in the Roman law, especially the question of the collegium tenuiorum and the collegium funeraticium . In the centre of the studies are the analyses of their legal personality, the changes in the regulation concerning their foundation, the purpose and the internal organisation. The treatment of the main topics begins with fragments from the material of the Corpus Iuris Civilis by Justinian. After that the views of the most important authors and the contemporary investigations in the Roman law found the statements of the paper. As a result of these analyses we can see the process of development in the ancient legal systems, especially in the Roman law. And although these results have no immediate influence on the present legal regulation, it can demonstrate original tendencies in the field of insurances. This way we can prove that the Roman law is a still existing basis for the development in contractual law.