From foedera pacis to foedera, paces

Peace treaties (foedera pacis) are mentioned by St Isidore of Seville (c. 560–636), the last of the Latin Fathers of the Church, in his famous enumerative definition of the law observed by all peoples (ius gentium). This text, written in the early seventh century, not only is a valuable example of the Roman law tradition within the Church, but later also became a legal norm (canon) of the medieval law code of the Latin Church, the Corpus iuris canonici, owing to the fact that in the twelfth century the learned monk Gratian (c. 1100–60) in Bologna quoted it in his handbook of canon law, the Decretum Gratiani. It is significant that the original Isidorian expression ‘foedera pacis’ in the official edition of the Decretum Gratiani in the sixteenth century, the so-called editio Romana, had been changed to ‘foedera, paces’. Obviously, pax had now acquired an autonomous meaning, which, as a legal term, it had never possessed in Roman times. We will encounter that wide legal concept of pax when we touch on the activities of the public notaries after the twelfth century.

The conclusion of treaties

International treaties – the solemn agreements between states or their rulers throughout the Middle Ages and into the sixteenth century – were concluded in the same way as in Antiquity, namely through declarations of the treaty-making parties, solemnly confirmed by mutual oaths.