The Synallagmatic Theory of Contract
One of the chapters in Divisions of Law will focus on Bodin's emerging theory of contract in the Juris Universi Distributio , partly to give some sense of how far Bodin followed the work of the humanist jurists that von Savigny would later call 'die Systematiker.' One of the most notable of these academic jurists was François Connan (1508-1551) whose Commentariorum Iuris Ciuilis was one of the first daring attempts to reorganize the whole body of civil law according to what might have been regarded a more logical, accessible pattern. Connan, like some of his contemporaries, were striving to achieve the Ciceronian ideal of a ius civile in artem redigendo - 'civil law reorganized into a system.' Connan's treatment of contracts is particularly noteworthy, for an Aristotelian idea he introduces in Book V: Connan, Commentariorum Iuris Civilis (1562) V, 1 p.474 (Photo: Daniel Lee, 2023) All genuine contracts, Connan declares, must fundamentally take the shape of w
