Private and Public Justice in Western Europe from the Middle Ages to Modern Era: Models, Paradigms, Institutions.

This thesis, articulated in three chapters, analyses the historical evolution of Western European justice from the early medieval predominance of private mechanisms of conflict resolution to the affirmation of centralized, state-based legal systems in the modern age. The first chapter examines the legal and institutional framework of early medieval Europe, focusing on the encounter between Germanic customary law and the late Roman imperial order. Through the study of migratory movements and the formation of the Visigothic, Ostrogothic, and Lombard kingdoms, it highlights a legal culture grounded in kinship structures, compensatory practices, feud, and ritualised means proof such as oath, ordeal, and judicial duel. The second chapter addresses the revival of Roman law between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. The rediscovery of Justinian’s compilation, and the new methods used by glossators and commentators contributed to the formation of a unified legal science. Within the system of the ius commune, Roman and canon law interacted with feudal customs and communal statutes, producing a complex pluralistic order. This context fostered significant procedural innovations, including the progressive shift from accusatory to inquisitorial models and the gradual transition from private vengeance to forms of public prosecution and judicial repression. Ultimately, the third chapter analyses the consolidation of princely and monarchical power between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries and its impact on the medieval plurality of jurisdictions. As monarchies strengthened and feudal structures declined, legislation became the principal expression of sovereign authority. Yet this process did not immediately eliminate older forms of private justice: practices such as the judicial duel, slowly transforming into the "affair" of honour, deeply rooted in aristocratic culture, continued to coexist with emerging state procedures and were gradually reinterpreted, restricted, or absorbed into the new criminal frameworks. Humanism and natural-law theories reshaped criminal doctrine, while the inquisitorial process, supported by judicial torture and new theories of proof, became a central instrument of state justice. Enlightenment thought and the critique of jurisprudential lawmaking prepared the ground for codification as the instrument of legal unification, marking the definitive transition from a fragmented landscape of private justice to a modern, state‑centred legal order.