Średniowieczny dyskurs prawny – czyli o początkach stylu urzędowego

Abstract

A mediaeval legal discourse was mainly shaped by the texts of legislative character, written in the sphere of the influence of Latin Christian culture and the Saxon-Magdeburg legislation. That is why Casimir the Great’s statutes – written in Latin, and only later translated into Polish, and laying the foundations for a Polish legal-formal style – must be analyzed in the context of a broader public discourse on the Polish and general European ground. The analysis of the royal statutes included in Kodeks Dzikowski pointed out that the legal discourse embraced three spheres: axiological, meta-legal and social one. The first level came down to marking the sources of law mainly referring to ethics, Christian morality, and the principles of a social life formulated in the Roman law. The elements of a meta-legal discourse can be found in numerous references and polemics with the binding norms not always meeting the requirements of justice, law and order. The third one, linguistically the most expressive, is the dialogue between the law establishing authority and the serfs. The use of numerous discourse rules includes the serfs into the social discourse by their being subjected in their relations with the monarch.