The relationship between natural and statutory law in ancient and medieval conceptions
The relationship between natural and statutory law in ancient and medieval conceptions

Summary/Abstract: The author presents the process of formation of the relation between natural law (lex naturalis) and codified law (ius civile) in the European political and legal concepts in a antiquity and in the Middle Ages. In the article, he submits for particular analysis views held by sophists, Aristotle, stoics, St. Augustine of Hippo and St. Thomas Aquinas, in order to point to regularities relating to this problem area on their basis. In the course of the studies, he comes to the conclusion that in the period under analysis, there dominated the conviction that law codified by the state authority (positive law) ought not to be inconsistent with natural law (and sometimes even with divine law) as a higher legal order. Codified law witch is incompatible with this higher law was generally considered not to have the power of being in force and for this reason not to understood as a virtue ordering to give everybody they due – were to result simply from natural law. To Christian thinker, the creator of those rules was the very God himself and therefore the law which came from him was placed by them the highest within the system of legal norms. They regarded natural law as a reflection of it. In turn, human-made law should reflect principles of natural law. It is only in the case of such an agreement within the hierarchy of legal systems that a harmony of social and political relations was possible.

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