Ferdinand Elsener

Notare Und Stadtschreiber: Zur Geschichte Des Schweizerischen Notariats - Arbeitsgemeinschaft Fur Forschung Des Landes Nordrhein-Westf Ferdinand Elsener 1962 edition

In Switzerland a study group of law historians has now been formed, in connection with the revision of Savigny's "History of Roman Law in the Middle Ages" (under the title "Ius Romanum Medii Aevi") to examine anew the problem of the reception of Roman and Canonicallaw in Switzer­ land, and to revise the present-day state of sources. The present report is based on the work of this study group, and can therefore contain only provisional results. In the districts that today comprise Switzerland, and in the rest of Ger­ many, the primary bearers of Roman/Canonicallaw were, apart from the tribunals and the officialate (ecclesiastical jurisdiction), the notaries. In all previous relevant literature, the history of the notaries has been predomi­ nantly regarded from the viewpoint of the notary's document as a purely scholarly aid - the unsealed Italian document. The formal question as to the extent to which the Italian model was adopted in German territories has been investigated. I t should however be remembered that the I talian and, later, the German notaries, trained in the law schools of Italy and France, who introduced the Italian model to the North, also brought with them the new Italian law on the Roman pattern, and the scholarly secretariate con­ nected therewith. As town clerks, the notaries played an important part in the development of municipallaw. The town clerks took over not only the council chancery as such, but also all voluntary (non-controversial) jurisdiction.