Delivering justice on a transnational scale in Europe. The Roman Rota and the enforcement of a legal culture of negotiation (c. 1560-1700).

Introduction

ROTAROM17 aims to understand the Roman Rota as one of the essential tools of the Catholic Church’s transnational governance in early modern Europe.

Objectives

How did this Rome-based court of appeal, which judged in the pope’s name important civil disputes involving the clergy and members of the social elites, succeed in having its authority respected outside the pontifical state?

Justice Expectations

Why did men and women from Spain, Portugal, or Poland expect to find in Rome a better justice, in spite of the long, cautious, and costly Rotal procedure?

Political Significance

On which grounds did challenges and criticisms of Rota’s jurisdiction have political significance?

Research Focus

Our aim is to study this institution which remains poorly known for this period, but also to see law in action in the settling of disputes.

Jurisprudence and Legal Culture

We will examine the way in which the court’s jurisprudence, used as a reference by legal experts and disseminated in libraries, contributed to the making of a legal culture founded on negotiation.

New Research Field

The project’s second objective is to open a new research field on Europe’s oldest still-active tribunal and facilitate access to its massive and under-used documentation by producing essential research tools and reference works, thus laying strong foundations for future developments of scholarship.

Team and Collaboration

ROTAROM17 brings together an international and multidisciplinary team (social, diplomatic, cultural and intellectual history, legal history) and foregrounds primary research, connecting the Rota’s archival funds with a large set of archival funds and libraries in Europe.

Contributions to Scholarship

By renewing approaches to the Roman Rota, its environment, personnel, litigants, and jurisprudence, and by opening up access to hitherto untapped documentation, ROTAROM17 will make a major and original contribution to rethinking the structuring role of the law in European culture.

Opportunities for Historians

The project will offer new opportunities for historians to explore their local or national fields of research from multiple perspectives in a large set of countries.