Exceptionally, the lecture takes place on a Tuesday.
Abstract
The Twelve Tables, in the5th century BC, regulated a procedure known as manus iniectio (seizure) : the creditor was authorized to take the insolvent debtor to his home and keep him in chains. In the absence of payment, the debtor could be sold abroad as a slave, or his body cut into pieces. The cruelty of the procedure led the Romans themselves to attempt to rationalize it, as shown by the (probably imaginary) debate between the philosopher Favorinus and the jurist Africanus, in Hadrian's time, reported by Aulu-Gelle (Nuits attiques 20.1). Praetors also designed civil enforcement procedures according to the rules of the Twelve Tables : imprisonment of the insolvent debtor was still, in classical times, a possibility for the creditor, who used his body to put pressure on him and his family and friends, without however going as far as selling him into slavery or tearing his corpse to pieces. Nevertheless, the practice of retaliating against a debtor's body survived well into antiquity. Saint Ambrose mentions it in his commentary on the Book of Tobit (10) : creditors went so far as to prevent - illegally - the burial of a dead debtor in order to put pressure on the heirs. The emperor Justin (Codex Iustinianus 9.19.6) also bears witness to this. Ambrose's homily should not be taken at face value : it reveals a subtext rich in legal metaphors, and suggests that he was a well-informed reader of Roman law texts, and undoubtedly of the Twelve Tables.
