is, as an institution coming into existence as a just consequence of the Fall of man - and on the other hand, by reference to supreme mediaeval philosophical authority - that is,Aristotle and his doctrine of slavery, according to which slavery was just on account of the fact that some humans, owing to flaws in character and reason were justly predestined to slavery.49 Thus, it can be argued that St.Thomas Aquinas mitigated the absolute claims of obedience to Christian natural law in a pragmatic direction determined by the socio-economic necessities of the day. However, the discussion of the natural legality of slavery makes it appear as if mediaeval natural law theory consciously modeled itself on historical conditions rather than vice versa, but such an observation is anachronistic. First, the primary mediaeval intellectual premiss was “… uncritical subservience … to authoritative doctrine”, as revealed by the surviving texts of Antiquity,50 such as, for example, of Greek philosophers and the Corpus Juris. Second, scholasticism did not apply historical truth as a criterion by means of which the plausibility of authoritative doctrine was to be determined.51 To the mediaeval mind, whatever the authoritative doctrine said was objectively true and real.Accordingly: “The ancient texts were beyond any questionvalid, and they had to be applied in everyday life, even if this called for strenuous and unremitting intellectual effort.”52 This is especially true with regard to the Corpus Juris, which the mediaeval jurists saw as a revelation of law.53 In mediaeval scholasticism, the freedom to disregard Roman law in the case of collisions between it and ius propriumdid not exist.This freedom is of a later date, and emerges when rationalistic legal theory turns skeptical to the dogma of the scholastic indisputability of Roman law, and its presumed a ca l l f o r s c i e n t i f i c p u r i t y 575 49 Welzel, Naturrecht, p. 66. 50 Wieacker, History, p. 30. 51 Denzer, Moralphilosophie und Naturrecht bei Samuel Pufendorf. Eine geistes und wissenschaftsgeschichtlice Untersuchung zur Geburt des Naturrechts aus der Praktischen Philosophie, p. 230. 52 Wieacker, History, pp. 30-31. 53 Ibid., p. 31.
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