Many cases were brought before Italian courts by allegations that defen-
dants had entered others’ lands or detained their serfs contra legem et
malo ordine et contra rationem.^100 There was an appropriate compen-
sation to be paid by those who were convicted of invading malo ordine
property with which others had been ‘invested legally’ or ‘by just order’
(legibus vestitus; iuste ordine vestitus).^101 Talk of ‘bad order’ and ‘just
order’ seems to have fallen into disuse as the Carolingian empire dis-
integrated, the Church’s ideal of peace taking over its territory, but
kings went on granting and confirming grants of land to be held
inconvulso ordine, inconcusso ordine, or more usually quieto ordine, by
which they seem to have meant in the first place a title protected in the
courts.^102 In post-Conquest England the notion of legal ‘quiet’ gained
new dimensions in the ‘quit-claim’ (quietantia, quieta clamantia) or
surrender of claim to another’s property, and in a person’s ‘acquittal’ of
a charge in the courts.^103
The legal order of the Carolingians was a set of procedures for the
trial of disputes. The centuries-long process of replacing the feud and
self-help by public judgments under the royal ban gathered momentum,
as the king enforced standard procedures of trial by boiling or cold
water and the other forms of proof by ordeal (ordines ad singulas
probationes spectantes).^104 Carolingian rule bequeathed a further
method of proof to medieval Europe: the inquiry (inquest, inquisition)
by sworn witnesses or jurors. At first, the judgment of God was replaced
by the verdict of human experts only in land disputes. The Carolingians
began to prescribe beforehand by an indiculumhow an ‘inquisition or
witnessing’ should be conducted in cases before the counts. In court,
‘the testimonies were heard and weighed, and the writs read over, and
all inquired in due order and by law [ab ordine... et per veram legem
inquisita]... according to the command and indiculumof the most
pious lord emperor.’^105 Capitularies of the first decade of the ninth
century ordered that there be ‘diligent inquiry’ in disputes about church
property; and that in Italy counts should generally bring to hearings
people with knowledge of the cases in hand, which might then be
Legal order 33(^100) I Placiti del ‘Regnum Italiae’, i. 38. 9 , 73. 9 , 111. 8 , 126. 12 , 222. 12 , 238. 12 , 243. 12 ,
- 13 , 278. 12 , 285. 11 , 319. 19 , 349. 5 , 353.9, 377. 6 , 461. 1 , 486. 3 , 528. 20 , 532. 10 , 548. 19 ,
(^101) Ibid. i. 73. 29 , 109. 5 , 235. 1 9, 477.4, 489. 16 , 499. 7.
(^102) Ibid. i. 39. 27 , 100. 24 , 101. 4 , 102. 9 , 135. 5 , 137. 25 , 138. 23.
(^103) For the English quit-claim, see F. Pollock and F. W. Maitland, The History of English
Law before the Time of Edward I, 2nd edn. (Cambridge UP, 1898), ii. 91–2.
(^104) The probationesare set out in Formulae, pp. 604–722 and cf. Capitularia, i. 107 (c. 17),
210 (c. 12), 281.
(^105) I Placiti del ‘Regnum Italiae’, i. 39. 25 , 138. 20 , 202. 22 ; Diplomata... Merowingica,
- 47 , 59. 3 (a suitor in the Merovingian palace might be allowed to proceed by whatever
‘order’ he chose.), 68. 7.