The Constitutions of Melfi, or Liber Augustalis, were a new legal code for the Kingdom of Sicily

Kingdom of Sicily

The Kingdom of Sicily was a state that existed in the south of Italy from its founding by Roger II in 1130 until 1816. It was a successor state of the County of Sicily, which had been founded in 1071 during the Norman conquest of southern Italy...

 promulgated on 1 September 1231 by Emperor Frederick II

Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor

Frederick II , was one of the most powerful Holy Roman Emperors of the Middle Ages and head of the House of Hohenstaufen. His political and cultural ambitions, based in Sicily and stretching through Italy to Germany, and even to Jerusalem, were enormous...

. It was given at Melfi

Melfi

Melfi is a town and comune in the Vulture area of the province of Potenza, in the Southern Italian region of Basilicata.-Geography:On a hill at the foot of Mount Vulture, Melfi is the most important town in Basilicata's Vulture, both as a tourist resort and economic centre.-Early history:Inhabited...

, the town from which Frederick's Norman

Normans

The Normans were the people who gave their name to Normandy, a region in northern France. They were descended from Norse Viking conquerors of the territory and the native population of Frankish and Gallo-Roman stock...

 ancestors had first set out to conquer the Mezzogiorno

Mezzogiorno

The Midday is a wide definition, without any administrative usage, used to indicate the southern half of the Italian state, encompassing the southern section of the continental Italian Peninsula and the two major islands of Sicily and Sardinia, in addition to a large number of minor islands...

 two centuries earlier. Originally a reform of the Assizes of Capua

Assizes of Capua

The Assizes of Capua were the first of two great legislative acts of the reign of Frederick II of Sicily, Holy Roman Emperor. They were the first, promulgated at Capua in 1220, before the Constitutions of Melfi of 1231....

 of 1220, themselves his reform of the Assizes of Ariano

Assizes of Ariano

The Assizes of Ariano were a series of laws promulgated in the summer of 1140 at Ariano, near Benevento in the Mezzogiorno, by Roger II of Sicily. Having recently pacified the peninsula, constantly in revolt, he had decided to make a move to more centralised government...

 of 1140, the Constitutions formed the basis of Sicilian law for the next six centuries.

The author of the Constitutions is purported to be Frederick himself, though Giacomo Amalfitano, Archbishop of Capua, appears as an influence as well. He was even reproved by the pope for accepting and advising clauses contrary to the wishes of the church. Traditionally, the work has been attributed to Pier delle Vigne, but it is almost certain that, while Frederick, Giacomo and Pier had their hand in it, the Liber is the product of months of work by a committee.

The Constitutions were written in Latin and translated into Greek before their promulgation. They were meant to apply, as with previous Sicilian law, to all the peoples of the realm: Lombards, Greeks, Arabs, Germans, Jews. The 253 clauses are divided into three books:

• The first regards public law (107 clauses; one of them missing in all manuscripts)
• The second regards judicial procedure (52 clauses)
• The third regards feudal, private, and penal law (94 clauses)

The Constitutions, like the Assizes before them, strengthened the power of the king and diminished the power of his feudatories. The centralising and bureaucratising tendencies of Roger II

Roger II of Sicily

Roger II was King of Sicily, son of Roger I of Sicily and successor to his brother Simon. He began his rule as Count of Sicily in 1105, later became Duke of Apulia and Calabria , then King of Sicily...

's legislation continued a century later in the Constitutions. It also continued to emphasise the sacral role and God-given right to rule of the monarch. Frederick II wrote in the Constitutions that "we, whom He elevated beyond hope of man to the pinnacle of the Roman Empire."

Militarily, the Constitutions prohibited bearing arms without permission. A standing Saracen

Saracen

Saracen was a term used by the ancient Romans to refer to a people who lived in desert areas in and around the Roman province of Arabia, and who were distinguished from Arabs. In Europe during the Middle Ages the term was expanded to include Arabs, and then all who professed the religion of Islam...

 army was created to prevent the king from having to call up the unreliable barons, surely angered by the Constitutions. These, the feudatories, were gravely affected in other ways, too. For example, the sale of fiefs was banned, putting an end to subinfeudation, and all vassals were subject to the king's taxes and other imposts.

Ecclesiastically, the Constitutions affected the bishops as they did all great landholders, but they also affected them in unique ways. The clergymen were made subject to the common courts. They were deprived also of judgement over heretics

Heresy

Heresy is a controversial or novel change to a system of beliefs, especially a religion, that conflicts with established dogma. It is distinct from apostasy, which is the formal denunciation of one's religion, principles or cause, and blasphemy, which is irreverence toward religion...

, prohibited from acquiring lands, and forced to sell inheritances.

Also like the great dioceses and baronies, the cities were affected by the centralising laws which removed their powers and made them more directly subject to not only the king, but his ministers as well. Cities could not become commune

Medieval commune

Medieval communes in the European Middle Ages had sworn allegiances of mutual defense among the citizens of a town or city. They took many forms, and varied widely in organization and makeup. Communes are first recorded in the late 11th and early 12th centuries, thereafter becoming a widespread...

s, as many in Northern Italy

Northern Italy

Northern Italy is a wide cultural, historical and geographical definition, without any administrative usage, used to indicate the northern part of the Italian state, also referred as Settentrione or Alta Italia...

 had, and were prohibited from electing consul

Consul

Consul was the highest elected office of the Roman Republic and an appointive office under the Empire. The title was also used in other city states and also revived in modern states, notably in the First French Republic...

s or podestà

Podestà

Podestà is the name given to certain high officials in many Italian cities, since the later Middle Ages, mainly as Chief magistrate of a city state , but also as a local administrator, the representative of the Emperor.The term derives from the Latin word potestas, meaning power...

s, on pain of sack and pillage. Like the baronage, the cities were deprived of rights of penal justice. These were transferred to the king and his magistrates alone.

These magistrates or ministers became a more important class. Fewer and fewer noblemen served the king as more and more simple freemen were raised to power. The magistrates were elected for a year pending reaffirmation and received a salary from the state. This made them loyal to the king and his administration, for without it they were nothing. The great officers of the Regno were the ancient ammiratus ammiratorum

Admiral

Admiral is the rank, or part of the name of the ranks, of the highest naval officers. It is usually considered a full admiral and above vice admiral and below admiral of the fleet . It is usually abbreviated to "Adm" or "ADM"...

, the grand protonotary (or logothete

Logothete

Logothete was an administrative title originating in the eastern Roman Empire. In the middle and late Byzantine Empire, it rose to become a senior administrative title, equivalent to a minister or secretary of state...

), great Chamberlain

Chamberlain (office)

A chamberlain is an officer in charge of managing a household. In many countries there are ceremonial posts associated with the household of the sovereign....

, great seneschal

Seneschal

A seneschal was an officer in the houses of important nobles in the Middle Ages. In the French administrative system of the Middle Ages, the sénéchal was also a royal officer in charge of justice and control of the administration in southern provinces, equivalent to the northern French bailli...

, great chancellor

Chancellor

Chancellor is the title of various official positions in the governments of many nations. The original chancellors were the Cancellarii of Roman courts of justice—ushers who sat at the cancelli or lattice work screens of a basilica or law court, which separated the judge and counsel from the...

, great constable

Constable

A constable is a person holding a particular office, most commonly in law enforcement. The office of constable can vary significantly in different jurisdictions.-Etymology:...

, and master justiciar

Justiciar

In medieval England and Ireland the Chief Justiciar was roughly equivalent to a modern Prime Minister as the monarch's chief minister. Similar positions existed on the Continent, particularly in Norman Italy. The term is the English form of the medieval Latin justiciarius or justitiarius In...

. The last was the head of the Magna Curia, the court of the king (his curia regis) and the final court of appeal. The Magna Curia Rationum, a division of the curia, acted as an auditing department on the great bureaucracy. Other than this, there was a sort of parliament

Parliament

A parliament is a legislature, especially in those countries whose system of government is based on the Westminster system modeled after that of the United Kingdom. The name is derived from the French , the action of parler : a parlement is a discussion. The term came to mean a meeting at which...

, consisting of not only the barons, but the universities and the landed commoners. It did not debate or rubber-stamp legislation, which was the king's to make and unmake, but merely received it and promulgated, giving its advice where it could.

Economically, state monopolies were imposed on silk, iron, and grain. On the other hand, tariffs on trade within the Regno were abolished. The privileges granted previously to Pisa

Pisa

Pisa is a city in Tuscany, Central Italy, on the right bank of the mouth of the River Arno on the Tyrrhenian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Pisa...

 and Genoa

Genoa

Genoa |Ligurian]] Zena ; Latin and, archaically, English Genua) is a city and an important seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria....

 were, however, rescinded. Weights and measures were uniformly regulated across the realm.

Finally, the equality of all citizens before the law was affirmed. The Constitutions made much of reducing the power of the nobility and of following the Roman tradition of equality before the law: thus, all freemen, all citizens, were equals, in theory. Likewise, for the benefit of commoners, Frederick banned trial by ordeal

Trial by ordeal

Trial by ordeal is a judicial practice by which the guilt or innocence of the accused is determined by subjecting them to an unpleasant, usually dangerous experience...

, ordering his judges to use instead "the common methods of proof which have been introduced both by the ancient laws and by our constitutions." The Constitutions notably used reason and logic to dismiss the superstitious foundations of the ordeal; for example, the use of trial by hot iron was dismissed because people believed "the natural heat of white-hot iron grows hot and, what is even more foolish, grows cold for no good reason at all", and trial by water was forbidden because of the belief "that the defendant of the crime, who has been established only by his guilty conscience, will not be received by the element of freezing water, when, in fact, it is the retention of sufficient air that prevents him from submerging." Frederick also banned trial by battle, ordering that more weight be given to the testimony of witnesses, although exceptions to this were granted to knights, and for cases in which no witnesses could be provided.

The Constitutions also contain incidental information relating to the practice of medicine. Frederick proclaimed that, in order to become a medical practitioner, it was necessary to have some practical experience, which, interestingly, many European university-educated doctors did not have in 1231.

According to Ernst Kantorowicz

Ernst Kantorowicz

Ernst Hartwig Kantorowicz was a German-Jewish historian of medieval political and intellectual history, known for his 1927 book Kaiser Friedrich der Zweite on Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, and in particular The King's Two Bodies .Kantorowicz was born in Posen to a wealthy, assimilated...

, the Liber "is the birth certificate of the modern administrative state."

Text edition, Translation

• Liber Augustalis, trans. James M. Powell. Syracuse University
  Syracuse University
  Syracuse University is a private research university located in Syracuse, New York, United States. Its roots can be traced back to Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, founded by the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1832, which also later founded Genesee College...
  
   Press, 1971.
• Wolfgang Stürner, ed., Die Konstitutionen Friedrichs II. für das Königreich Sizilien'', in Monumenta Germaniae Historica
  Monumenta Germaniae Historica
  The Monumenta Germaniae Historica is a comprehensive series of carefully edited and published sources for the study of German history from the end of the Roman Empire to 1500.The society sponsoring the series was established by the Prussian reformer Heinrich Friedrich Karl Freiherr vom...
  
  , Constitutiones et Acta Publica Imperatorum et Regum, vol. 2, supp. Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1996.

Literature

• David Abulafia, Frederick II. A Medieval Emperor (1988), chapter six.
• Messana, Federico. Liber Augustalis o Costituzioni melfitane (1231).