constitution of 1235 is similarly described as drawn up by Frederick II
‘always august emperor of the Romans, king of Jerusalem and of Sicily’,
‘so that in the happy state of our times (sub felici nostrorum temporum
statu) the government of peace and justice may be strong around the
people subjected to our empire’. Specific laws to reform ‘the general
state and peace of the empire [generalem statum et tranquillitatem
imperii]’ had never before been introduced into Germany, the constitu-
tion goes on; there men had previously dealt with private matters by
ancient and unwritten custom, and in the courts’ opinion rather than
the sentences of established law decided cases.^96
The Constitutio Pacis of 1235 repeated the usual injunctions to
everyone to respect the courts and property of the Church, to knights to
observe truces, and to the parties in disputes to refrain from self-help
and precipitate resort to feud. Again it enjoined all those who held
rights of jurisdiction from the emperor to judge justly and see that their
subordinate judges did likewise; revoked newly-established tolls and
coinage; and forbade unauthorized conductusand the obstruction of
public roads. The first fourteen chapters are thus in the tradition of the
Landfrieden. The two novel elements of the constitution are in the
remaining chapters 15 to 29, which comprise a stringent code of
criminal law. Firstly, in chapters 15 to 21, ungrateful sons convicted of
seizing their parents’ property were ordered to forfeit their inheritances.
Anyone who plotted the death or other personal harm of his father was
to be deemed without the protection of a lord or of legal rights (erenlos
et rehtlos), as were servants who aided him in his crimes, and witnesses
were not to be excused from testifying simply because they were also
members of the family, for this hateful and detestable crime was against
divine and human law. In these chapters Frederick was surely providing
justification for his treatment of his own son. Further chapters con-
cerned outlawry. The walls of a town and of the house in which an out-
law sheltered should be pulled down, a township with no walls set on
fire; the emperor would see it done if the local judge would or could not.
The second innovation of the Constitutio Pacisappears in chapters 28
and 29. Because he was preoccupied with the affairs of many lands and
regions and could not preside personally over the cases of complainants
to the imperial court (querelancium causas), the emperor wished to have
a man of proved trustworthiness and honest opinion to decide them in
his place. This justiciar was to be a free man (i.e. not a ministerialis),
who would sit in the royal court every day but Sundays and other major
feast-days to do justice except in the most serious cases and those con-
cerning the rights, honour, fees, property, or inheritance of great men,
which the emperor reserved to himself. At the same time a ‘special
German Landfrieden 97(^96) Constitutiones 1198–1272, 241.