Law Archive
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Byzantine Intelligence Service
Posted on May 20, 2012 | No CommentsThe basis on which the successful administration of the Roman Empire at its zenith was built was the cursus publicus, or the state post. This organization also made the service of intelligence more effective. -
Perfect Virgins and Suicidal Maniacs: Monks in Early Thirteenth-Century Pastoralia
Posted on May 18, 2012 | No CommentsThis summary is of a paper that was the last in the English Cistercian series at Kalamazoo. -
The Court of Beast and Bough: Contesting the Medieval English Forest in the Early Robin Hood Ballads
Posted on May 6, 2012 | No CommentsThe medieval English forest has long been a space of contested legal meanings. After King William I first created the 75,000-acre New Forest, the English monarchy sought to define the vert, both legally and ideologically, as a multiplicity of sites in which the king’s rights were vigorously enforced. -
‘The inordinate excess in apparel’: Sumptuary Legislation in Tudor England
Posted on April 29, 2012 | No CommentsSumptuary legislation can be defined as a set of regulations, passed down by legislators through statutory law and parliamentary proclamations, that sought to regulate society by dictating what contemporaries could own or wear based on their position within society. -
William of Ockham’s Early Theory of Property Rights: Sources, Texts, and Contexts
Posted on April 22, 2012 | No CommentsThis thesis is nominally about William of Ockham, a theologian who did not care to read potentially damning papal constitutions until tapped to do so by a superior (superiore mandate). Following a suggestion of R. G. Collingwood, a proper first question we should ask, is what was this supposedly unwilling theologian trying to do by composing the longest defense of Franciscan poverty ever written? -
The Conjugal Debt and Medieval Canon Law
Posted on March 22, 2012 | No CommentsThe apostle Paul was the earliest influential spokesman for a Christian view of marriage and sexuality. Marital sex was, for Paul, a safeguard against human weakness (1 Cor. 7.1-2). -
Writing the Order: Religious-Political Discourses in Late Anglo-Saxon England
Posted on March 19, 2012 | No CommentsThe issue of how authority was created, maintained and defined in religious terms by the written word is therefore the main concern throughout this study. -
Writing Land in Anglo-Saxon England
Posted on March 19, 2012 | No CommentsIn using writing as a means to contain dispute over time, the Anglo-Saxons repeatedly inscribed the troubling evidence of past dispute and anticipated loss into their thinking about land. -
Jewish Communal Organisation in Sixteenth-Century Polish Towns
Posted on March 18, 2012 | No CommentsTherefore, this essay will deal not only with the structures of Jewish communal organisation proper, but also with the question of its emergence and development in the context of its non-Jewish environment. -
The art of medicine: Midwives and obstetric catastrophe: retrieving the past
Posted on March 11, 2012 | No CommentsFor the historian, however, and for any healer with an eye for the human dimensions of medicine, the story has just begun. For Floreta is, in fact, the first known European midwife to be put on trial for the death of a mother in childbirth. Indeed, she is charged not with simple medical negligence, but with premeditated murder. -
Sources of Spirituality in the Writings of Archbishop Hincmar of Reims
Posted on March 7, 2012 | No CommentsArchbishop Hincmar of Reims (845–882) was perhaps one of the most influential authors in Carolingian history. He donned the humble cloth of a monk only to transcend that humble destiny in his mission to bring spiritual perfection to an errant temporal sphere. -
Whose Music is it Anyway? How we Came to View Musical Expression as a Form of Property
Posted on March 6, 2012 | No CommentsBy analyzing the economic and legal structures governing music making in Western Europe from the classical period in Greece through the Renaissance, the article shows that the law first granted some exclusive rights in the Middle Ages, when musicians' guilds enjoyed the exclusive right to perform music in medieval cities, but that the concept of music as a form of property was not established until -
The legal status of religious minorities in the medieval Mediterranean world: a comparative study
Posted on February 28, 2012 | No CommentsFrom Baghdad to Barcelona, Jews, Christians and Muslims rubbed shoulders in streets and in marketplaces, shared meals, undertook joint economic ventures, traveled together, etc. -
Law and War in Late Medieval Italy: The Jus Commune on War and Its Application in Florence, c. 1150-1450
Posted on February 28, 2012 | No CommentsThis study examines the development of the theory of war in the jus commune, or common law, of the late Middle Ages, and considers how such legal theory was put into practice by the government of Florence in the same period. In particular, the study examines the law on war in the fourteenth century in detail, and places Florentine wartime diplomacy in the context of its legal disputes and negotiations, in the period 1388-1402. -
Medieval Prostitution in Secular Law: The Sex Trade in Late Medieval London, Paris, and Toulouse
Posted on February 24, 2012 | No CommentsIn order to understand the regulations that were put into place to deal with prostitutes and their trade in medieval England and France, it is important to have an understanding of what the legislators were trying to regulate. Who were these prostitutes? What acts constituted prostitution? What actions made a person a procurer, pimp, or bawd?
