Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No.10, 2022

The Construction of the Pluralistic Integration of Western European Law in the Middle Ages

(Abstract)

Zhang Naihe

In the course of their migration, the Germanic peoples encountered the unified legal system of the Code of Theodosius compiled in the late of the Western Roman Empire. Thereafter, they established a succession of laws that broke down this legal system and launched a process of pluralistic legal construction. As feudal economic and social life began to stabilize and develop, a tripartite legal system of feudal law, canon law, and maritime law gradually took shape in medieval Western Europe. The revival of Roman law unified the three legal systems in terms of legal principle, thus contributing to the triune pattern of medieval law in Western Europe. Overall, this system’s construction underwent a process from integration to pluralism and thence to a new form of integration. This offers an important stimulus for the re-understanding of Western Europe’s legal civilization in medieval times.