On Roman Collegium

Roman collegium (plural collegia), as the predecessor of the modern legal persona system, has started fairly extensive research and attention abroad, while in China, however, there is no research in this field so far.For a group of individuals that wished to create a collegium, there needed be at least three. Originated in the period of Kings of Rome and prosperous in the era of the Roman Empire, collegium has already had the essence of the legal personality in the mid and late empire. It could thus enjoy rights and assume obligations as an artificial person.According to their different purposes, Roman collegia were of various types, including religious, trade, political, etc. then assumed respectively different responsibilities. In addition, there was a special kind of group, namely the military association, although did not have the essence of the legal person, but still belonged to the development of the collegium. That is what the preface and the first chapter of this thesis introduces, the Roman collegium research situation at home and abroad, the definition of collegium, historical origins and developments of collegium, types, etc.The second chapter using a typical analysis method describes the most important collegia, they were also associations slowly developed into relatively complete legal persons, the navicularii collegium and the pistore colleguim, which related to Roman grain supply. As we know, stable grain supply is the lifeline of a country and occupies an vital position in the national security. Rome, especially, under the premise that it could not be self-sufficient in food and a large proportion of its grain counted on imports from its provinces, so how to ensure the security of grain transport and distribution was particularly first and most crucial.This chapter introduces the background of the Roman grain supply, the duties and characteristics of navicularii collegium and pistore collegium in turn, comparing them with modern corporations, and also describes the other collegia related to grain supply, such as saccarii (porters) collegium, mensores (food weighing members) collegium and so on. Through the historical analysis of these typical collgia, we can clearly see how the collegium as a whole obtained legal rights and obligations slowly.As the last chapter of this thesis, chapter three using inductive method presents the effect of collegium and the corporate capacity entitled by Roman law. While the effect of collegium covers two aspects, on its members and on Roman society, the capacity enjoyed by them was derived from Roman cities’.The Roman jurists thought that the organizational structure of colleguim was similar to Roman cities, it had magistri, lex collegii, schola, etc., it should also be regarded as an artificial person, enjoying rights mainly including ownership, lawsuits, right of concluding contracts, right of succession, right of manumission, assuming tort liability and so on, these are all similar to modern corporations. But Roman collegium was still in early development, due to the limit of the times, there is no summary of the complete legal person theory. But there is no denying the fact that Roman colleguim’s development has laid a solid foundation for the development of modern corporate theory.