Jacobus Emerix de Matthis, Decisiones Sacrae Rotae Romanae, in Books that made the Law in the Western World: the Formation and Transmission of Western Legal Culture, Studies in the History of Law and Justice

Jacob Emerix de Matthis (1626-1696), judge of the Roman Sacra Rota for almost thirty years, is author of an important collection of Decisiones Sacrae Rotae Romanae, published in Rome in three volumes in 1701. The book, containing 1.370 decisions of the Roman Sacra Rota, spanning the period 1669-1696, belongs to the genre of the collections of the European great tribunals’ decisions, spread all over Europe between 14th-15th centuries and consolidated during 16th-17th. Between the most numerous, authoritative and widespread collections, were the Decisiones of the Roman Sacra Rota, the supreme tribunal of the State of the Church dating back to 14th century, whose prestigious and authoritative jurisdiction was known and referred to all over Europe. As a judge of the Roman Sacra Rota and between its most important and expert reporters, Emerix wrote his Decisiones in order to clarify and consolidate the points of law under discussion and, at the same time, to preserve the decisions of the court allowing its judges to refer to useful precedents in future analogous cases. Emerix attention to the position of the legal problem, always accurately described, exemplifies the changes occurred since 16th-17th centuries. First of all his decisiones, which belong to the individual collections, differ from the ones collected in the past, less detailed and more heterogeneous in their contents: being they written for personal usage, they normally included short legal maxims, consilia and personal opinions, while usually lacked the decision, which started to be put in writing systematically only after the reform of 1563. Secondly, the decision starts to be delivered no more on different legal questions, but on the «dubium generale totius causae complexivum», quite broadly worded, with the mention of the case as a whole. Emerix’ Decisiones mostly concern canon and civil law, with particular reference to matrimonial cases, execution of wills, land law. Anyway the decisions are by no means final judgments: according to rotal procedure, infact, the decisio was an autonomous extra-judicial act containing the reasoned conclusions of the twelve judges of the collegium, a simple account by the ponens about the learned opinions given by his colleagues in order to solve the dubium. The decisio would be communicated to the parties before the issue of the final judgment (sententia) − which, on the contrary, did not include motives – and delivered only if no new arguments or evidence were brought forward. This is why Emerix does not always report whether the decisions gave rise to a judgment or not: many cases were probably amicably settled and never brought to judgment, or were later superseded by other decisions in the same case. In tracing the authorities of the different arguments illustrated in the decisions, which appear as doctrinal works more than reports of cases, Emerix refers, as main sources of law, to the Corpus Juris Canonici and Corpus Juris Civilis, to the opinions of eminent canonists and civilians, to the opinions of past rotal judges and, most of all, to precedent decisions of the Sacra Rota itself, continuously cited. Emerix’ book enjoyed a wide international circulation and his decisions were frequently quoted in the main collections of 18th-19th centuries. The enormous success and international circulation of the Decisiones of the Sacra Rota, highly demanded by the auditores of the court and by lawyers in general, who found in them the doctrinal opinions of expert and renowned jurists and the solution to various legal problems analytically exposed, proves that the Decisiones had became a fundamental reference point in the administration of justice all over Europe, an indispensable mean to clarify and to know law overcoming legal uncertainty generated by the crisis of the jus commune.