Does The First Roman Law Serve As A Source Of Authority?

“The first Roman laws were a mixture of religion regulation, customary rules, and popular conception of justice. (Wanlass, 1953)

Under the Roman theory of laws, the religion served as the element of authority; by which the offenses committed against public order were considered as the offense to gods and not to the state. Upon the codification of the Roman laws based on the twelve table, the offenses committed now is the offense against the law of the state rather than disobedience to gods. The change that happened made customs or the chief source of law disappeared. Now, the law was considered the will of the state in which human in nature served as the new source of authority. The distinction between the state and individuals gave emphasizes

The argument of ecclesiastical authority was that the church should have a greater amount of power in accordance to the key note policy of Pope Gregory about justitia in which the pope has the right to correct even the kings if they disobeyed the law of Christ. The Petrine theory in which the final authority was conferred to pope has a general power to the pastoral supervision, which includes the rulers and its subject.

On the other hand the argument of secular authority was that the political society is just the same with the church that which is divine in origin. The mutual agreement between the ruler and its people are based on the feudal ideas, to administer and to maintain justice in accordance to law. The best temporal claim of authority was in the revised study of Roman law in which affirm the emperor as De in terris or the authority of the emperor is unquestionable. In order to offset the claim of the ecclesiastical, they (secular) utilized the old maxim that the will of the emperor is the law thus; the emperor governed the civilized world based on the Roman

The general principle that governed to replace the authority of the pope was on the formation of representative church council, while representative parliament in order to replace the power of the king. The decree of Constance which is consider as the most revolutionary document in history in which it lead up to the effort to replace the Roman ideals of authority. The great schism that split the west and east church together serve as an opportunity for the liberal churchmen to assert the theory of limited monarchy as the best in both the church and state. When general welfare was at stake the resistance to pope and king are justifiably; which is based on the utilitarian doctrine. Further more, the pope can be depose if he did not obey the law of nature or become incompetent to the position in which the temporal ruler can call the church council to depose the