Scuba

In the Merovingian era, and at first under the Carolingian, the obligation to attend court meetings was the duty of hundreds of free adults; This duty extended to ordinary periodic judicial meetings ( mallus legitimus, mallus publicus, echte Ding ), as well as to deliberate, extraordinary, collected in connection with a particular case ( minus placitum, gebotene Ding ). The service was very difficult, hundreds of people by all means avoided appearing at court meetings, and the counts, for their part, used all means to force them to turn up. The reform of Charlemagne was aimed at resolving such an abnormal state of affairs. Previously, the verdict was formulated by the college of the so-called Rachimburgs and, according to its approval, a hundred came into force. The Rahimburgs were elected for a fixed term, probably for one meeting. The reform of Charlemagne introduced a permanent institute of scabines instead of rakhimburgs (other Latin names: indices, auditores, juridici, legum doctores, legislation latores ; in some places scabins are called rachimburgs from old times, which proves the undoubted continuity between the two institutions).

It is impossible to establish the date of the reform with accuracy, since the law introducing it has been lost. In the capitals, scabines were first mentioned late, only after 800 ; meanwhile, in Italy they are already found in 774 , that is, immediately after its conquest, and in France - in 780 . There is reason to believe that the institution of scabins was introduced between 770 and 780 years.

Skabins were elected by the count with the assistance of the judicial community, from among the hundreds. Legally, land ownership was not a condition for joining a college of scabines; only deprived of their rights ( infami, vilae personae ) were not allowed in its composition, but in fact their collegium was for the most part composed of large landowners and vassals, after the election they swore swearing in good faith ( ministerium ), because they were regarded as royal officials. The skabins were supposed to operate within their hundreds, but if necessary, they were called up to other hundreds of the same county and even to another county. Their number for the most part, as well as the number of former Rakhimburgs, was determined to be seven people.

The scabs were supposed to be present at both regular and deliberate court meetings, but the introduction of the scabins institute substantially modified only the second. The obligation of hundreds to attend regular court meetings remained in force: there, scabs only replaced the Rakhimburgs; but since regular judicial meetings in each hundred were on average only twice a year, and deliberate ones approximately every two weeks, judicial duty was greatly mitigated. A deliberate court ( gebotene Gericht ), which ceased to be a judicial assembly, became the real court of scabins : a hundred, as a judicial community, ceased to convene there, therefore, approval of a hundred ceased to be required for the sentence to enter into force. At the new deliberate trial the count , scabbines, parties and witnesses were to be present; later the presence of the former became optional, and he was usually replaced by the headman ( Schultheiss ). Thus the distinction was made between a count court as a regular court and a scabin court as a deliberate court. The competencies of the latter were subject to less important cases: minor criminal ( quae facile possunt de iudicari ), debt, movable property, etc. The sentence was entirely in the hands of scabbards; the judge only supervised the meetings, took care of the enforcement of the sentence and monitored the observance of the so-called “judicial world”. On the contrary, in regular judicial assemblies, scabbards were only lifelong rakhimburgs: the verdict was only formulated by them and hundreds were submitted for approval.

A court of scabies was usually convened every two weeks, and mainly in the main city of the county; that is why, in its further development, the court of scabins is more and more closely connected with cities and the Institute of Schöffen ( Germany ) and Eschevens ( France ) grows out of it.

• Schöffen
• Eschenes

• Sohm: "Fränkische Reichs- und Gerichtsverfassung", 1871.
• Brunner: Entstehung des Schwurgerichte, 1872.
• Brunner: “Herkunft der Schöffen” // “Mitteilungen d. österreich. Inst. ”(VIII).
• Schröder: “Lehrbuch der deutsch. Rechtsgeschichte ", 1894.

• A. Dzhivelegov: Skabin // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary : 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1890-1907.