Publisher's Synopsis
. 1913 edition.: ...of particular parties; when men had given up the de jure unity of Europe under a universal Empire, and moreover when they turned their attention from inter-communal to properly international problems, a wider and higher basis than the Roman "jus commune" had to be found for International Law. To illustrate Bartolus' attitude we may now turn to one of his most interesting treatises--the Tractatus Repraesaliarum: its opening words express his attitude so exactly that we shall do well to quote them in full. "Repraesaliarum materia," he says, "nec frequens nec quotidiana erat tempore quo in statu debito Romanum vigebat Imperium; ad ipsam nam, tanquam ad summum monarcham, habebatur regressus, et ideo hanc materiam legum doctores et antiqui juris interpretes minime pertractaverunt. Postea vero peccata nostra meruerunt quod Romanum Imperium prostratum jaceret per multa tempora, et reges et principes ac etiam civitates, maxime in Italia, saltem de facto in temporalibus dominum non agnoscerent, propter quod de injustitiis ad superiorem non potest haberi regressus, coeperunt repraesalia frequentari, et sic effecta est frequens et quotidiana materia. Ego itaque, Bartolus de Saxoferrato, civis Perusinus, minimus legum doctor, cum speculationibus ad jus civile spectantibus operam dans ad communem utilitatem et maxime universalis studii Perusini super ista materia libellum composui1." We see how very clearly Bartolus realised that, the superiority of the Emperor being no longer recognised, and the Roman Empire lying prostrate, new problems had arisen which had to be faced, as new problems, because they were not present to the lawyers of former ages. Is it really true to say, in view of passages like this, that the civilians were ignorant "that the world had outgrown the Imperial conception2"? Bartolus treats the subject of reprisals in a very wide sense, as being often equivalent to war; in fact "concedere repraesalias est indicere bellum3." Hence...
