Abstract
This article deals with the influence of the Latin version of the Bible, known as the Vulgate, on the Western European medieval tradition of law. Despite the enormous multi-language literature on the history of the Bible in the Middle Ages, this question is surprisingly poorly studied. The author concentrates on five forms of the Vulgate's influence: 1) adoption of particular biblical, usually Old Testament, legal norms into medieval legislation; 2) creation of legal norms under the general influence of the biblical narrative; 3) deliberate and unconcious use of expressions borrowed from the Vulgate in the formulation of new legal norms and in the description of legal customs; 4) adoption of certain juridical terms, dominium and possessio serving as examples; 5) influence of the new concept of law (directum) forged by Jerome in the process of translating the Bible and fundamentally different from the Roman concept of ius. In the author's opinion, this form of influence proved to be the most important and demanded in the Middle Ages, directly affecting the emegence of the Modern European notion of law.
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