1. The first person who opened the line of Romance scholars in our faculty was Albert Kiss (1874–1937). He had been the Roman law and the private law professor of the Erzsébet University of Pozsony, disannexed after the peace dictate of Trianon, he came here from there.

He did his habilitation in 1902 in the field of Hungarian civil law. In the two semesters before this he had pursued university researches in Berlin, Leipzig and Munich by scholarships. From 1898 he was the professor of the Law Academy of Kecskemét, and from 1905 was the director of it. Between 1907 and 1914 he taught at the Law Academy of Kassa. From 1914 till 1921 he was the civil law professor of the Erzsébet University of Pozsony and became the dean of its Faculy of Law in the 1919/20. academic year. After the termination of educaion in Hungarian language he came to Szeged, where he undertook the direction of the Department of Roman Law and he kept this position until his death in August 1937. He primarily composed in the field of civil law, as his academic achievement of literature reflects it, however, these two areas of law could have hardly been separated in that time, because of the lack of a civil code.

2. The next prominent person of Romance studies in Szeged was Kálmán Személyi (1884–1946), the public ordinary professor of the university at the Department of Roman Law. He submitted his habilitation work as a Privatdocent in 1918 in Pozsony, and after the detach of Pozsony he was declared a university Privatdocent in 1921 in Budapest. He could gain a chair hard, from 1928 he deputized at the Department of Roman Law in Budapest. He got an appointment from the University of Szeged as a public ordinary professor. He was the head of the department between 1938 and 1940. From 1940 till 1945 he directed the Roman Law Department at the faculty, returned to Kolozsvár. After the war he returned to Szeged where he was the pro-dean of the faculty of the year 1945/46., however, because of his illness he could hardly take part in teaching. He died in 13th August 1946 in Szeged.

Regarding the fact he could speak in German, French, Italian and in English and also read the literature about Roman law, the level of his work met the contemporaneous European standard. His work concerning the theme of interpolatio is expecially precious: its findings are temperate, free from the overstatings of the so called interpolatio-hunting, at the beginning of the century. He considers all the characteristics that international literature observed about the effect of interpolatio, his point of view keeps a low profile, he advoids radical text-critique. Watching him in retrospect of seventy years, his work still provides effective guiding for researchers.

His study about the law of ogligations can also stand as an introduction for beginning researchers. He could not get away from the influence of Géza Marton, either, regarding the cathegories of liability, however, his findings are still, even today, mostly acceptable.

His work about the stages of culpability in Roman law published in 1943 in Kolozsvár, may be called his best one. In this writing expecially his opinion formed about culpa (negligence) diverses from the concept of Marton, prevailing in the Hungarian Romance philology. His researches helped in reaching the viewpoint considered to be correct today, which states that culpa had already been devided, and the development, considered to be postclassical by many, had already terminated in the classical period. His findings are regarded fundamental even today.

Two of his important writings also have to be mentioned. In 1932 his Roman Law I-II. textbook was published in Nyíregyháza, the spread of which was mainly barred by the popular coursebook of Géza Marton. Besides the Marton-coursebook, this was the highest standard coursebook of that time, considered to be European leveled. Several of its parts can still be used in education.

3. One of the most excellent, even internationally highly appreciated figures of the Hungarian Romance philology after the second world war is Elemér Pólay (1915-1988), who, as a result of his habilitation process, was declared a Privatdocent in the field of Roman legal history in 1946, in Debrecen. At the end of the 1940’s, as a county court judge, he taught Roman law at the Law Academy of Miskolc. 1949 he came to Szeged to the Faculty of Law; from 1950 he was an institution- and from 1951 a university teacher; he was the head of the Department of Roman Law from 1949 till 1985. For ten years (1949-1958) he also directed the Department of Civil Law. Between 1955 and 1957 he served as a vice-rector. He was the head of the Educational Commission for fifteen years and of the Academic Commission for ten years at the Faculty. Particularly in the latter, he worked a lot for improving the scolarly life of the Faculty. From 1963 till 1988 (till his death) he was a committee member of the Hugarian Association of Classical Studies. From 1968 until 1988 he was an editor committee-member of a Romance philological journal called The Journal of Juristic Papyrology.

In 1938 he was a scholarship student at the University of Berlin, and at the winter semester of 1965 – as an acknowledged scholar – he presented his monography A dáciai viaszostáblák szerződései (The Contracts of the Oilboards of Dacia), as an entirely new result of research in the frame of university lectures in Munster, Heidelberg, Freiburg und Cologne for four months.

He was one of those scholars who did not forget, that they were university teachers as well: he told frequently and self-confidently, that he considered himself first of all a „Schulmeister”, and as a university lecturer he considered his main task to lead his audience to the inside world of law. His excellent lectures and seminars and even his method of examining served for this task. Thousands of lawyers learnt the fundamental legal definitions from him. His taking pedagogy seriously is proved by his 16 articles that he wrote about teaching topics and were published in Felsőoktatási Szemle (a higher educational journal). In the 1950’s with his collegues, Ferenc Benedek from Pécs and Róbert Brósz from Pest, he did very much for sake of retaining Roman law as a university discipline.

As a scholar researcher, he had a determining role in scholarly life of Hungary in the field of Roman law, after the second world war. During his studies at the Law Academy of Miskolc he attained impulse from Zoltán Sztehló to study Roman law in a pandektist direction and this is reflected in his study called A dacio in solutum, published in 1939, which Géza Marton considered to be the best of his early studies. The urge to study Roman law in a rather historic way he got from Paul Koschaker in his seminar at Fridrich Wilhelm University, Berlin, and the knowledge he acquired there inspired him to direct his further work to the historical ground. The lectures of Werner Sombart, the world famous professor of history of economics from Berlin, strengthened this motion in him and also drew his attention that the development of the legal institutions in Roman law is dependent of the economic factors and social circumstances of that particular era. Arriving back from Berlin he wrote his habilitation work titled A praetor szerepe a római magánjog fejlődésében (The Role of the Praetor in the Development of Roman Private Law), in which he presents the law-making process of the praetor in its own historic way.

Seven of his monographies and 140 of his professional works were published in Hungarian, German, French, English, Spanish, Polish and Turkish. He first made his name internationally through his studies, published abroad. He wrote several lecture notes in Roman law and private law and he worked on the Roman law course book, used for more than 20 years, with Professor Brósz.

He got a request in 1957 from the National Museum to translate the three labour wage contracts found in the material of the oilboards of Verespatak. He started to reveal the relics of the Roman era of Hungary as a true patriot with great plesure. Beyond this assignment he worked up the entire material of the oilboard contracts. The treated work first was announced in forms of partpublications (from 1962) in Zeitschrift der Savigny Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, also in The Journal of Juristic Papyrology and in the Magyar Tudományos Akadémia Acta Anticqua (journal of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences). He published the whole material in 1972 in Hungarian under the title A dáciai viaszostáblák szerződései (The Contracts of the Oilboards of Dacia). This writing is the widest working up of the legal life of the provinces. He brings close to today the everydays, the economic life, the forms and content of contracts of the province, existed about 1800 years ago. He mentions in his book several times, that Dacia has nothing to do with the theory of dacoroman continuity (Emperor Traianus exterminated or took dacs into slavery to Rome; only that several dacs remain alive who took shelter around the swamp of the Kőrös Rivers; the Empire laws applied in the provinces lost their subject by evacuation of the Romans).

He was interested also, in that period, in the question of the differentiation of social norms in Ancient Rome. This work was published in 1964 in German by Akadémiai Kiadó (Academic Press). Its Hungarian version constituted also his „major” doctoral dissertation that he succesfully defended in 1964. The most important merit of the writing is that it separates the adopted philosophical definitions from the products of the positive law, the law of the praetors from the definitions of aequitas, ius naturale and ius gentium. He defines period by period the division of the Roman legal system and its reasons, and he separates the definitions of the modern private and public law from the Roman ius publicum and ius privatum. Besides, he suggested then proved, that it can be pointed out by the development of abstaction (generalization, unification, leaving the unnecessary formalities), that the Justinian law was at a higher level than the classical law, treated as the peak. This „heretnic” point of view, that Endre Nizsalovszky and Miklós Világhy also supported in Hungary, was defeated in the West, expecially from that time Sorbonne professor Sautel, who said that „In the propositions of Pólay Eastern man’s nostalgia manifests itself for Bizanc”. However, today many agrees upon his pioneering view. According to the communis opinio, formed in Romance philology, the codification of Justinian is at an equal level with classical jurisprudence. This idea can be traceable mainly to Pólay’s point of view and his searching results.

At the end of the 1960’s he made a little detour and started to work up the history of the Hungarian pandektism. During this work he realized, that first of all he had to work on the German history of pandektism in order to deal with the national one; so he did so.

His monography, A pandektisztika és hatása a magyar magánjog tudományára (The Effect of the Pandektism on the Hungarian Private Law Jurisprudence), published in 1976, shows both the German and the Hungarian history of pandektism. Its part about the German history was published separately in German in 1981 under the title Ursprung, Entwicklung und Untergang der Pandektisták. The scholarly acknowledgement of this German version is shown by the fact, that several German coursebooks use it as educational material. Readers can get acquainted with the entire material of the dogmatics of private law, with the different forms of institutions, systems and the theories of these in the historic development, from Savigny to Windscheid. The author shows the general part of the so called pandektist system, created in the dogmatic school, and he also presents the diverse definitions of the authors about the subjective right and about the disputed question of legal relation. He presents the quite various theories about the legal person. He deals in details with the views about the legal transaction theory. He follows along the proving of these propositions in Hungary, and he also presents the academic achievements of the most excellent pandektists in Hungary.

Always the narrow-sense Roman jurisprudence stayed among the frames of the research of Elemér Pólay, his studies in this topic came along all his path of life. His first writing in this theme got the title Publius Mucius et Brutus... fundaverunt ius civile, and the last one gained the title A római jogászok gondolkodásmódja (The Way of Thinking of the Roman Lawyers). The latter includes the Professor’s three-decade-long academic achievements. He considered it his life-work. All he wanted to tell about Roman law (detailed elaboration, superficial presentation, references, conclusions, summaries, source-analysis, theories) can be found in it. It provides a guide to all we know or would like to know about Roman law. This work became an essential handbook for professional researchers and it is also suitable for the aim of presenting the beauties of Roman law for law students in the frame of a seminar. Its subtitle is Kazuisztika és absztrakció (Kazuistics and abstraction). Who is familiar with Roman law a little, finds it out soon, that the author observes one of the greatest problems of Roman law, that is, whether Roman law owned an academic theoretical basis, or whether we are dealing with the collection of law-case resolutions. He presents the question through the academic work of lawyers, living in five well separated eras of Roman law. The work is free from prevalent academic prejudgements of the different periods. It is also a big merit of the author that he had the courage to state the proposition – that he also proves by crucial arguments – that the preclassical period was the mother of the great works of Roman law, and it was the task of the classics to refine, to chisel, to abstract stage by stage, and to work up particular legal institutions in details. He said, at the same time, that the classical lawyers formed the base, constituted in the preclassical era, and the legal material into jurisprudence.

At the beginning of the 1980’s he started to work on another topic: personality protection in the field of private law. In 1983 his monography A személyiség polgári jogi védelmének történetéhez (To the Private Law Protection of the Personality). By examining the dogmatical questions period by period, he reaches the conclusion that he can only get to well-founded results if he reveals the historical changes in details. He rewrote his work, which was published in English under the title Injuria Types in Roman Law. He points out, on the one hand, how ius and iniuria became from definitions to the abstraction of legality and illegality in the postclassical and Justinian law, and, on the other hand, he endavours to reveal the system of the non-contractual liability and the liability in general, that is, the objective liability in the archaic era.  

Right before his death he started to deal with the comparison of the legal institutions of Roman law, partially with the laws outside the Empire, partially those inside it. He had one article in this theme. He was full of energy and love of work: death reached him suddenly.

Professor Pólay did a lot for sake of the international acceptance of the Hungarian Romance philology. He developed wide international relationships. In 1984 in Szeged he organized the first conference of the people specialized on Roman law, in association with the research team Gruppo di Ricerca sulla diffusione del diritto romano.

He drew near the high standard culture of the ancient world to today’s people. He propagated the primarity of spirit and mind. He endavoured to seek for and introduce eternal intellectual values. He became the first in the line of Romance scholars in Hungary by both his academic educational and research activities.

4. The next figure of the Romance philology in Szeged was the student of Pólay, Imre Molnár (1934–). He became a university teacher and took over the position of the head of the department in 1985 after he had walked through the stages of the academics of Szeged.

As a university lecturer he has always followed the rule while teaching his subjects, that the material can only be given successfully and examined strictly if it is clear and understandable. When giving the lectures the teachers have to „fly down” to the level of students, which is reasoned by the fact, that students attending Roman law courses are in their first academic year. His educational work contains seminars, optional subjects and academic student cessions, which he delivers to those who are interested in this discipline beyond the obligatory level.

As an academic scholar he is a great, alive authority in Hungary on his main area of research, the liability system of Roman law, and he is acknowledged and cited by the international academic public life as well. His main work in this topic is A római magánjog felelősségi rendje (The Liability System of Roman Private Law) was published in 1994. This monography deals with liability in the particular historic periods of Roman law in details. Its characteristics are historical view, full-scale usage of resources and the introduction of international literature. This thesis contains all that can be known about this topic according to the present state of science.

He also worked up the relations concerning the Roman lease in a monography, that contains the rules of lease of goods, lease of apartments, service contracts and also lease of labour (furthermore a lot of modern contracts such as transport and buliding contracts). Through the relations of lease, he reveals the Roman society and the colourful legal life of that time. His findings evoked the approval of the international Romance philology. Beside his main field of research he is also interested in the academic achievements of Gaius, expecially his Institutiones, Molnár tries to draw and objective picture of his academic work, emphasizing his incredible effect on the legal education until today.  

Professor Molnár announced authoritative papers about the development of the Roman private law in the classical period and he deeply examined the particular legal agreements, expecially the legal institution of locatio-conductio. His work is prominent in the field of legal comparison as well; here he primarily observes the effect of the system of Roman private law on the modern European private law systems. His current topic of research is Roman criminal law and he has already written an important work: Büntető- és büntetőeljárásjogi alapelvek római jogi előzményei (Roman Law Predecessors of Principles of Criminal Substantive Law and Criminal Procedural Law). With his initiation and direction the Department of Roman Law takes part in the research programme aiming to create a European common law. He is devoting to searching ius commune with his colleagues. He wrote the coursebook Roman Law (with the co-author Éva Jakab) in 2001, that is a significant achievement of the „School of Szeged”. The greatest advantage of the book is the clear presentation and the style, that makes it a mateial to be studied easily. Besides this, it includes the results of new researches and the Roman law, that is classical but also meets the modern requirements.

5. The representative of the younger generation, Éva Jakab (1957-) also comes from the Pólay-school. She is the current head of the department. She attended her legal studies in Szeged and soon after her graduation (1982) she became a colleague of the Department of Roman Law. She started to teach immediatelly (seminars, lectures for correspondence and evening students, and later for regular students, too), and she acquired the fundamentals of academic searching from Professor Pólay. She gained her first academic degree in 1990 (doctor universitatis), she defended her candidate’s thesis in 1992 and did her habilitation in 2001. She became a university docent in 1993.

Her research work is concentrated on the Roman law of obligations, particularly the law of purchase. Two of her most important works are Stipulationes aediliciae. A kellékhibákért való helytállás kialakulása és szabályai a római jogban, Szeged 1993, 221 p. (The Development and Rules of Liability for Deficiency); and Praedicere und Cavere beim Marktkauf. Sachmangel im griechischen und römischen Recht, Munich 1997, 332 p. (Warranty in Greek and Roman Law). The latter deals with the legal institution of warranty on the side of the vendor in Roman and Greek law, focusing expecially on contractual practice. According to the garantie-stipulatios, remained on the oilboards, warranty was included in the contracts not because of the aedilian compulsion, but because of the contractual practice and wide-spread usage of contract-formulas. The author denies the originally accepted theory of aedilian stipulatios and seeks for the explanation among the characteristics of the aedilian legal process.

Her other publications were announced, mainly in German, in foreign journals in the following topics: atipical contracts in the field of maritime transportation, the dogmatical function and practical role of deposit (arrha) in the Roman and Greek law of purchase; the delay of the creditor in Roman law, with a comparative overview of the effective legal regulation; damage caused by incitement in Greek law; assumption of risk in Roman and Greek law. Her searching speciality is the comparative, functional analysis of the ancient rules: she compares the Greek private law, particularly the deed-material of the Hellenic Egyptian papyruses with the commentaries of the classical Roman lawyers, she confronts dogmatics with the contractual practice of everyday’s legal life.

She is the author and co-author of two cousrebooks: Forum Romanum. Jogesetek és szerződési minták római jogból (Law Cases and Contract-formulas from the Roman Law), manual, Szeged 2002, 238 p.; and Molnár Imre-Jakab Éva: Római jog (Roman Law), coursebook, Szeged 2001, 479 p. In her activities as a lecturer she also handles the resource-analysis as the central point, she emphasizes the importance of law-case exercises and the acquirement of technics of argumentation and legal way of thinking.