Consilia and Dynastic Successions in Modern Europe

Abstract

The production of consilia in the modern era was an important avenue for lawyers to take part, both as a class and as a group, in the practical and ideological construction of the ‘modern State’. Merchants, lords, and princes were often parties to litigation on business matters, contracts, properties, but even more frequently, on issues involving partition of huge estates amassed through marriages, dowries, and inheritances. When the protagonists of these family matters were rulers and sovereigns, these matters became, more or less explicitly, political and administrative issues, ending up intertwined. Already in the Low Middle Ages, Oldradus da Ponte lend his knowledge to prestigious clients, bringing him to occupy himself not simply with small domains but eventually with entire kingdoms as Maiorca or Aragon. Whereas in the 14th century this role was afforded only to a few highly authoritative professors, with the Modern Era, the link between legal consultancies and the building of the modern state became closer and more explicit. In the 16th century, in the modern ‘society of princes’, matters of marriage and succession within royal houses accompanied and determined public and international law systems. The Republic of Venice too, for delicate cases like dynastic successions (for instance about Gorizia), had recourse to the knowledge of ius commune jurists. Between the 16th and the 17th centuries, the doctores legum were more amply involved in many other cases of European relevance. The succession to the Portuguese throne and to the marquisate of Montferrat controversies, of the latter half of the 16th century, were veritable international intrigues. These complex and delicate affairs, like many others, provided the opportunity for professors hailing from various universities to intervene in defence of this or that pretender and to play a primary role in the conflict which involved virtually all the royal families of Europe.