notary’ was to be appointed to record the names of outlaws and liti-
gants, the substance of their cases, and the security given by discharged
outlaws ‘according to the custom of their localities’ that they would
satisfy the plaintiffs. The notary should also record the decisions given
by the emperor himself in great cases, particularly where there had been
conflicting opinions, so that there would be no ambiguity when similar
cases arose in future.^97
The emperor was following the son he had deposed in attempting to
provide a system of justice for all Germany; this at a time when the
kings of France, England, and Castile, and Frederick himself in Sicily,
were also having to respond to the querelaeof wider communities than
their immediate vassals.^98 When he appointed a head justiciar for his
Sicilian court, Frederick prescribed the way defendants should be
brought to court: the letters of citation must say by whom and before
whom and for what sort of matter the complaint (querimonia) had been
submitted; and they must give the time within which the defendant was
required to appear—in person, if it was a criminal prosecution, in
person or through a representative if it was a civil action.^99 There
survives a formulae magnae imperialis curiae, clearly a formulary of the
Sicilian court since it refers to the seventh and twenty-fifth chapters of
the Constitutions of Melfi, which is comparable to the registers of writs
which were just beginning to appear in England. It contains forms
equivalent to the English writs of right (no. 3) and novel disseisin (nos.
6 and 15), and particularly to writs of trespass seeking damages for
injuries alleged to have been committed violently or clandestinely and
therefore matters for the king’s court because against the public peace.
Thus, no. 23 orders the citation of a man accused of assaulting the com-
plainant with a lawless gang, using prohibited weapons (cum societate
illicita et armis prohibitis), and in contempt of the imperial peace; no.
29 of one alleged to have thrown the complainant into his private prison
imperiali pace contempta(cf. also nos. 10, 11, 22, 29).^100
98 The Spread of the Organized Peace
(^97) Constitutiones 1198–1272, 246–7, 261–3; cf. E. Klingelhofer, Die Reichsgesetze von
1220, 1231/2 und 1235(Weimar, 1955), 97–112.
(^98) For Frederick’s appointment in 1234 of justices to meet twice-yearly in five named towns
to do justice to anyone wishing to complain of injuries (conqueri de damnis et injuriis) inflicted
by the king’s officials, see Historia Diplomatica, 4, ii. 460–3; for querelaein France and
England, see Ch. 6 below, and A. Harding, ‘Plaints and Bills in the History of English Law,
mainly in the period 1250–1350’, Legal History Studies 1972, ed. D. Jenkins (Cardiff, 1975);
for Castile, see E. S. Procter, The Judicial Use of the Pesquisa in Leon and Castile(EHR
supplement no. 2, 1966), 32.
(^99) Historia Diplomatica, 4, i. 49–50, 54–5, 64–6.
(^100) Acta Imperii Inedita Saeculi XIII et XIV (Urkunden und Briefe zur Geschichte des
Kaiserreichs und des Königreichs Sizilien), 1 (1198–1273), ed. E. Winkelmann (Aalen, 1964),
721–30; for English writs, see Early Registers of Writs, ed. E. de Haas and G. D. G. Hall,
Selden Soc. 87 (London, 1970); and for writs of Trespass, Roll of the Shropshire Eyre of 1256,
ed. A. Harding, Selden Soc. 96 (1981), pp. xxxii–lviii.