Abstract
Observing Rome through the prism of its law : this is the aim of the " Law, culture and society " lectureship , instituted for the first time at the Collège de France and entrusted to Dario Mantovani.
All law is a technique for giving form to society, but a technique that in turn takes its form from society. This is particularly true of Rome, where - beyond legislation - the role of jurists has been fundamental. Private individuals, legitimized primarily by their skills, they offered their disinterested advice to their fellow citizens, gaining social prestige in the process. The law thus evolved in the form of a debate, a great collective discourse, in which each jurist could make his voice heard, if he had the right arguments. A rhetoric without guile, guided by shared values, in which the law is not only order, but also reason.
A discourse that has even been transformed into a literature, whose beauty comes from its density, the precision of its language, the rhythm in which the solemn steps of the law resonate. A literature capable of arousing the pleasure of reading and which deserves to be rediscovered, as demonstrated by the very man who founded the Collège de France, Guillaume Budé : his commentary on the Digest (in 1508) was an eminent example of the prism that law could provide for looking at a society and its culture (and also for questioning one's own era). Indeed, Roman law, after belonging to Rome, belonged to Europe. And while Dario Mantovani's lectures focus on the ancient period of Roman law, he does not lose sight of the cross-fertilization of eras.
From the 11th century onwards, the Corpus Iuris Civilis, a collection of Roman legal texts compiled by Emperor Justinian between 528 and 534 A.D. , formed the core of university lectures. Attracted by this intellectual reminder, first in Italy and then in most of present-day Europe, generations of students have learned to read these texts in a demanding and fascinating way, in the light of ever-changing needs and questions. Later to become lawyers, judges or civil servants, they carried forward, reworked and disseminated ideas that were fundamental to the European construction of the idea of justice and the rule of law : the law of an ancient city thus became common law in the West. This Chair will be open to intense transdisciplinary collaboration, to place the study of Roman law where it can contribute to shedding light on the history of Rome and its empire, and the way in which this technique has nourished the institutional imagination of the West.
