Past/Present: Leonardo Bruni’s History of Florence
Past/Present: Leonardo Bruni’s History of Florence Giuseppe Bisaccia Renaissance and Reformation, Vol. 21, No 1 (1985) Abstract The importance of historical consciousness in the…
Choice of law in Medieval France
The medieval scholastic when faced with a doctrine he did not like or an authority that stood in the way of his own ideas would simply say “sed distinguo” and remove the opposition from his path, whether it was a phrase from St. John, a comment of St. Augustine, or a constitution of Innocent III. Modern lawyers are very much the heirs to this technique,
Crime and Punishment in Early Irish Law
Is it possible to tell from the information we have if hanging entered the laws due to the influence of the Church and biblical law, or if it existed as a punishment before the rise of the Church’s influence?
Hywel Dda manuscript now online
The National Library of Wales has digitized and put online the Boston Manuscript of the Laws of King Hywel Dda. The manuscript was purchased last year at auction for £541,250.
Double sex, double pleasure? Hermaphrodites and the medieval laws
I think the question of how the medieval laws dealt with ambivalent bodies deserves some attention in own right. The more general question is: how did medieval societies deal with experiences that challenged accepted views of what was normal?
Clandestine Marriage in the Diocese of Rochester during the Mid-Fourteenth Century
Seventeen suits concerned with some aspect of marriage litigation have left traces amongst the instance business dealt with between 1347 and 1348.
The First of Century of Magna Carta: Three Crises
The First of Century of Magna Carta: Three Crises Ralph Turner (Florida State University, Department of History – Emeritus) Paper given at Presbyterian…
“Her Husband Went Overseas”: The Legal and Social Status of Abandoned Jewish Women in Medieval Provence and Languedoc
This paper deals with the legal term ‘medinat ha-yam’ (meaning ‘overseas”) in Jewish law, which, among other things, refers to a husband abandoning his wife, and to debtors who refuse to pay their debts, and commercial partners who took someone else’s property out of their homeland.
What did the Vikings ever do for us?
Well they were a lot more generous in their beach ownership laws, says Derek McGlashan
Cheapside: commerce and commemoration
The broad street of Cheapside, Vanessa Harding shows, was a central location in the lives and minds of early modern Londoners. In a crowded city it was a significant open space where public events could be staged and important issues communicated to a wide audience. The everyday reality of shop and market trading — where qualities and values were scrutinized and false dealing punished – enhanced its association with truth and patency. Normally dominated by the authorities, it was on occasion captured by oppositional groups, though their activities tended to reinforce Cheapside’s identity as a place of publicity and validation.
Theft, Homicide and Crime in Late Anglo-Saxon Law
In order to understand these issues properly we must first consider our own ideas about ‘crime’, a deeply problematic term for the period before the late twelfth century.
Danish Penal Law in the Middle Ages: Cases of Homicide and Woundings
In the provincial laws, a killing was not simply a killing. The penalty imposed on the killer depended on the conditions under which the killing had taken place.
Reconstruction of a Judicial Duel c. 1400
Watch this demonstration of a judicial duel at the turn of the 15th century, presented at the International Congress on Medieval Studies in 2013
Reading between the lines: Old Germanic and early Christian views on abortion
The object of my studies was to determine whether women in the early medieval Germanic West (could have) committed abortion, when confronted with an unwanted or inconvenient pregnancy.
Student Violence at the University of Oxford
My first foray of KZOO 2013 couldn’t have been off to a better start with, “I just don’t want to die without a few scars”: Medieval Fight Clubs, Masculine Identity, and Public (Dis)order. There were only two papers in this session and both were riveting. I felt like I couldn’t type fast enough to get it all in! The first paper was given by Professor Andrew Larsen of Marquette University. Professor Larsen published a book on high and late medieval student violence and the Saint Scholastica’s Day Riot at Oxford university.
Identifying Women Proprietors in Wills from Fifteenth-Century London
Most Londoners lodged their post obit requests with the Husting Court, the county court of London. The testators were primarily wealthy artisans and merchants, since one needed to possess a substantial amount of property in order to register the details of the division of that property.
The Interrogation of of a Male Transvestite Prostitute in Fourteenth Century London
Despite the general rule that sexual offenses were matters for the church courts, in some cases the city of London took charge of these offenses. Prostitution and procuring, for example, involved public order; the temporal courts dealt with them for that reason, so that the same people might be prosecuted in both jusrisdictions for the same offense.
New Towns in Medieval France and Nature of Institutions
In its early stages, a new town was a village community created by a central authority (king or overlord) on his wildland to meet the needs of growing populations and to further both its own benefits and the common interests of the inhabitants.
Intermarriage in fifteenth-century Ireland: the English and Irish in the ‘four obedient shires’
The so-called ‘four obedient shires’ of Meath, Kildare, Louth and Dublin are a fruitful area for a study of marriage between the English of Ireland and the Irish, as these counties comprised the region of the colony most firmly under English control in the fifteenth century. Much of the anti-Irish rhetoric that survives in sources from the period…
Lawyers in the Old Icelandic Family Sagas: Heroes, Villains, and Authors
Along with the accomplishments of skill in arms and verse-making, many a saga hero is credited with a knowledge of law and legal procedure. Many of these heroes are shown duelling with their enemiesin a series of legal disputes forming a series of chapters.
Licit and Illicit Sexuality in Medieval Iberia: A Survey of Las Siete Partidas
This thesis examines Las Siete Partidas, a thirteenth-century Castilian legal code of laws, including on marriage and illicit sexual behaviors.
Hunting and Hunters in Medieval Aragonese Legislation
Our research on hunting in the kingdom of Aragón in the 12th-15th centuries is based on the information provided by two groups of legal texts: those for local or regional areas and those that were applied to all the kingdom after the 13th century.
Gilbert Foliot and the two swords : law and political theory in twelfth-century England
Considering the importance of the Church as a driving force in twelfth- century political history, the complex relationship between piety and Church involvement in lay politics during this time period remains surprisingly under-explored.
Detecting gestures in medieval images
We present a template-based detector for gestures visualized in legal manuscripts of the Middle Ages. Depicted persons possess gestures with specific semantic meaning from the perspective of legal history.