L’interprétation des termes d’homme ou de personne en droit savant, source d’inégalité

• Main Author: Élisabeth Schneider
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: L’Harmattan 2015-04-01
• Series: Droit et Cultures
• Subjects: Free Man; Interpretation; Person; Persona ficta; Persona vera; Slave
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/droitcultures/3533

Since the XIIIth century, the term persona is frequently used by the jurists of the civil law and the canonists to indicate human beings, universitates or a temporal or spiritual office. The new expressions persona vera, persona repraesentata or persona ficta make it possible to determine the type of person which is the object of discussion. But in absence of adjectives added to persona, the medieval jurists are brought to interpret the terms persona, homo, quis and they wonder if they have to include these terms as synonyms of ‘man’, ‘woman’, of ‘free man’ or of ‘slave’ or even of universitas. This is a very important question because according to the reserved qualification, different rights and obligations are recognized. First of all, we suggest to examine the principles of interpretation in medieval law by showing that the law itself is understood as a person consisting of a body and a spirit, then we proceed to analyse the casuistry of the disparity of rights and obligations awarded to the respective persons.