Jurists, Clerics, and Merchants: The Rise of Learned Law in Medieval Europe and its Impact on Economic Growth

• Published date: 01 June 2014
• Author: Hans‐Bernd Schäfer,Alexander J. Wulf
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jels.12041
• Date: 01 June 2014

Jurists, Clerics, and Merchants: The Rise of

Learned Law in Medieval Europe and its

Impact on Economic Growth

Hans-Bernd Schäfer and Alexander J. Wulf*

Between the years 1200 and 1600, economic development in Catholic Europe gained

momentum. By the end of this period, per-capita income levels were well above the income

levels in all other regions of the world. We relate this unique development to the resurrec-

tion of Roman law, the rise of canon law, and the establishment of law as a scholarly and

scientific discipline taught in universities. We test two competing hypotheses on the impact

of these processes on economic growth in medieval Europe. The first conjecture is that the

spread of substantive Roman law was conducive to the rise of commerce and economic

growth. The second and competing conjecture is that growth occurred not as a result of the

reception of substantive Roman law but because of the rational, scientific, and systemic

features of Roman and canon law and the training of jurists in the newly established

universities (Verwissenschaftlichung). This gave the law throughout Europe an innovative

flexibility, which also influenced merchant law (lex mercatoria), and customary law. Using

data on the population of more than 200 European cities as a proxy for per-capita income,

we find that an important impact for economic development was not primarily the content

of Roman law, but the rise of law faculties in universities and the emergence of a legal

method developed by glossators and commentators in their interpretation and systematiza-

tion of the sources of Roman law (Corpus Juris Civilis, Digests) and canon law. The endeavor

to extract general normative conclusions from these sources led to abstraction, methodol-

ogy, and the rise of law as a scholarly discipline. Wherever law faculties were founded

anywhere in Europe, jurists learned new legal concepts and skills that were unknown before

and conducive for doing business.

I. Introduction

Has the unique legal development that began around the year 1080 at the University of

Bologna and changed the concept of law throughout Europe had an impact on economic

*Address correspondence to Hans-Bernd Schäfer, Bucerius Law School, Jungiusstr. 6, 20355 Hamburg, Germany;

email: hans-bernd.schaefer@law-school.de. Wulf is at Bucerius Law School, Hamburg and SRH Hochschule, Berlin.

We thank Michael Funke, Dirk Heirbaut, Reinhard Zimmermann, Tilman Repgen, Vincenzo Colli, Benjamin

Veal, Claus Ott, Peter Behrens, Hein Kötz, Karsten Schmidt, Robert Cooter, Marcus Schadl, Herrmann Pünder,

Roland Vaubel, Jaroslaw Beldowski, Marco Fabbri, participants of workshops where we presented the article, and two

anonymous reviewers for valuable comments and suggestions. Our special thanks goes to Axel Moeller, who helped

us with the empirical data and graphs. We are very indebted to Ted Eisenberg, who made substantial suggestions as

to the models used, as well as to Jim Gordley, who provided us with valuable additional information on the law and

legal scholarship in the Middle Ages. All errors are the authors’ responsibility.

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Journal of Empirical Legal Studies

Volume 11, Issue 2, 266–300, June 2014

266

growth? Some legal historians regard this process, which culminated in the establishment

of a systematic, rational, and sophisticated body of law, as one of the greatest cultural

achievements in Europe.1It gave rise to the resurrection and reception of Roman law in

some countries and to the establishment of an equally sophisticated system of canon law in

all of Catholic Europe and later its development to a jus commune. Little is known,

however, whether and to what extent this cultural achievement contributed to the eco-

nomic growth over the same period, in which Western Europe became the most opulent

world region, long before the growth processes in the 18th century that culminated in the

Industrial Revolution (see Figure 1).2

We show how the spread of Roman law and the spread of learned lawyers trained in

universities influenced city growth. Our panel study spans from the year 1200 to 1600 and

uses data on city population, the proliferation of universities with law departments in

Europe, and the extent to which Roman substantive and procedural law was received in the

different European regions. It also includes other variables with an important effect on the

population of cities, such as, for instance, the population numbers in Western European

countries and regions, the catastrophic bubonic plague in the 14th century, and the degree

of political and economic freedom in the different regions of Europe.

1H.J. Berman, Law and Revolution. The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition (1983); P. Stein, Roman Law in

European History (2009); T. Repgen, Ius Commune, in H.P. Haferkamp & T. Repgen, eds., Usus modernus

pandectarum. Römisches Recht, Deutsches Recht und Naturrecht in der Frühen Neuzeit. Klaus Luig zum 70.

Geburtstag 157–73 (2007).

2The GDP per-capita estimates since the year 1 A.D. by Angus Maddison show that during the Middle Ages Western

Europe, especially Northern Italy and Flanders, broke out of the general world development and that most regions

of Western Europe achieved per-capita income levels well and significantly above all other world regions in the year

1500. See A. Maddison, Historical Statistics (2003).

Figure 1: Per-capita GDP 1000–1600, in 1990 dollars.

Source: Maddison, A. (2003) Historical Statistics. Paris: OECD.

Jurists, Clerics, and Merchants 267

The article is organized as follows. First we present some well-established facts about

the development of “learned law” in the newly established universities. We proceed to

present hypotheses of legal historians on the impact of this development on the economy.

The next section describes our model with the population number of cities as a proxy for

per-capita income as the dependent variable and with variables on the spread of Roman law

and the spread of law faculties as independent variables. We also correct for several other

factors that might have had an influence on city population in the relevant regions and

periods. We then present the results of the study, for which we use, among others, a fixed

effects model. The most important finding is a significant positive correlation between the

number of citizens in a particular city and the number of universities in a circle of 300

kilometers around the city. In the last section we deal with the causational link between

these two variables. We find some evidence that the arrow of causation goes from the rise

of universities and learned law to the growth of cities—that is, for a supply-side develop-

ment. However, a causational link in the other direction, driven by the demand of flour-

ishing cities, cannot be excluded. The combined development of learned law and

economic growth was arguably a kind of intertwined medieval Silicon Valley effect, with a

demand for new law from the emerging merchant cities and a supply from learned lawyers,

who provided new and formerly unknown legal products. This had an impact on the

economic rise of Western Europe.

II. Some Facts About a Quiet Cultural Revolution

A. A New Law

From the standard literature on legal history in medieval Europe we extract some facts that

are important for hypothesis building. During the early Middle Ages, some Roman law

survived in the kingdoms evolving in the territory of the West Roman Empire and in the

East Roman Empire, but in a form that was hardly conducive for economic growth. Roman

law, however, did not disappear completely. It remained alive in Italy, around the Gulf of

Lyon and in parts of Iberia.3These states continued to use legal practices that had evolved

during late antiquity when the principate, introduced by the Emperor Augustus, changed

into a “dominate.” The principate was still based on republican roots with limited powers of

the emperor and allowed a flourishing urban economy. The dominate of late antiquity

destroyed this backbone of the empire’s wealth by a ruthless system of taxes, services,

regulations, and requisitions for the main purpose of maintaining the bureaucracy and the

army.4

3We thank a referee for this information.

4F. Wieacker, The Importance of Roman Law for Western Civilization and Western Legal Thought, 4 Boston Coll.

Int’l & Comparative L. Rev. 257, 273 (1981); F. Wieacker, Privatrechtsgeschichte der Neuzeit unter besonderer

Berücksichtigung der deutschen Entwicklung (1996).

268 Schäfer and Wulf