I due cataloghi delle ‘leges damnatae’ al crocevia del diritto europeo

Comparing the seven leges damnatae identified by van Eck and the traditional catalogue (perhaps of medieval origin) of leges damnatae, the essay highlights van Eck’s tendency to privilege matters of immediate practical impact: in this sense the attention paid to the associative agreement for supplying food markets is highlighted. In the Dutch list, the role of the creditum is especially important: five out of seven leges concern the mortgage, the amortisation of capital and interest in constant instalments, the place of payment, the regime of the guarantee, and interest. The attention to philology, and therefore to the text of the Corpus iuris seen as a problem in itself; the combination of ratio legis and the search for the system; the recourse to Cartesian logic under Spinoza’s influence of the application to the humanities of the method proper to the mathematical and natural sciences are the framework that allows us to understand the cultural and practical significance of van Eck’s doctoral thesis.