Das Fortleben des römischen Rechts in der Slowakei
The Continuation of Roman Law in Slovakia

Summary/Abstract: In Slovakia, the history of Roman law has not yet been fully evaluated until today, as it is unclear whether this task belongs to legal history or to classics. Moreover, there is not much interest in research since Roman law is assumed not to have been taken over and thus not to have been binding. First traces of Roman law can be found in the statutes of King Stefan I. of Hungary (1000-1038), but in Slovakia, which belonged to Hungary at that time, the Hungarian kings used Hungarian custom law as their main source. The domestic law in force at the time was so uniform, and business and society were in such conditions, that no further law was needed. Furthermore, church and nobility were afraid of losing the authority that was given to them by the domestic law. But with the establishment of the University of Trnava in 1635 a significant break-through of Roman law took place. At its beginning, the university was provided only with faculties of philosophy and theology; the law faculty was added in 1667 and lectures on Roman law were offered for the next 110 years. Although this long time interval suggests continuity, in fact there was none, but a high fluctuation of teachers and many interruptions, due to events such as financial problems or the plague. Since Roman law specialists were not available in Slovakia at that time, the teachers were canonists and theologians who were at least competent in the Latin language and thus interpreted the Latin written sources of Roman law. The University of Trnava was closed in 1777; it left an opened view for the tradition of Roman law to future generations of lawyers.

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