Legists

Legists (from lat. Lex - law) - lawyers , lawyers who held the positions of royal advisers. Developed and implemented Roman law , which they contrasted with ordinary law . Of particular importance in France in the XIII century. Legists - immigrants from the urban estates, held administrative and judicial positions in the state apparatus; played a large role in the centralization of France.

Starting from the XIII century. a large class of people appeared in France, brought up in new schools of Roman law, ethnicity-minded people who gradually replaced many administrative and judicial posts in the royal, and sometimes senior, service, pushing out the little nobility, more interested in military campaigns than in court or management. Prone to formalism and not shy, at the same time, in the choice of means, they gradually expanded royal jurisdiction at the expense of senior and subordinated the country to the rule of common royal law. They took an active part in the study and editing of customary law, its processing in connection with Roman law and its application to life, as the main figures in the parliaments . The heyday of their activities coincides with the era of the most intense struggle of the king and feudal lords, under Philip the Beautiful . The feudal lords saw the worst enemies in the legists and cruelly avenged them in the era of feudal reactions, creating for many of them the glory of the martyrs for the state idea.

Legists are sometimes also called philosophers, "legalists" of China , see fajia .