Human Drama, Animal Trials: What the Medieval Animal Trials can Teach Us About Justice for Animals
There is a long history, mainly from the medieval and early modern periods, of animals being tried for offenses such as attacking human beings and eating crops.
The Scandinavian element beyond the Danelaw
The present paper concentrates on the Scandinavian element present in Eng- lish in the area beyond the Danelaw, i.e. in the West Midlands and Southern parts of the country.
England: One Country, Two Courts
The tension created by the two-court system is an integral part of England’s administrative and constitutional history. Exactly how integral has generated a considerable amount of scholarly work, from explanations of the sources of the conflict, to how the disagreement over jurisdiction was addressed throughout the Middle Ages, to what impact the issue had in shaping England’s overall political development.
Suicide in the Middle Ages
All three types of source need careful interpretation. Suicide is notoriously elusive to records even in modern times, and more so for the Middle Ages. Once due allowances have been made for each genre, however, it is some reassurance that they agree on certain basics, and that these, in turn, agree with estimates from better-recorded centuries…
Sovereignty and Territoriality: An Essay in Medieval Political Theory
To advance this task of conceptual clarification, my essay offers an excursus into medieval political theory. It argues that sovereignty, as the idea is used at present, has its genesis in a theological concept—it the notion of highest authority the archetype for which is God. But why invoke the medieval tradition to talk about all this?
Property Rights in Celtic Irish Law
Unfortunately, many historians not specializing in the study of the ancient Irish law tracts have been unaware of the textual inaccuracies of the O’Curry – O’Donovan translations and have continued to incorporate their older unscientific work, and that of their editors, into their own work.
Spectacularizing Justice in Late Medieval England
I use the word ritual because in cases of treachery use of a general ‘script’ as ordered by these two accounts emerges with surprising frequency in England in the late 13th and early 14th century.
The Church in Fourteenth-Century Iceland: Ecclesiastical Administration, Literacy, and the Formation of an Elite Clerical Identity
In what follows, therefore, I provide a detailed study of Icelandic clergy and the institutions of the Icelandic Church in the period from 1300 to 1404.
Women on the Rack: Torture and Gender in the Ius commune
The story that I will tell in this essay is of four women. Queen Sibílla Fortià of Aragon, an unknown woman named Mita, Beatrice Cenci of Rome, and Artemisia Gentileschi, also of Rome. What unites these four women is torture. All four were summoned to court, and all four were tortured.
The Law’s Violence against Medieval and Early Modern Jews
Ken Pennington examines the issue of forced baptism of Jewish children in the legal literature from the Middle Ages to the early modern period.
Comital Authority, Accountability and the Personnel of Comital Administration in Greater Anjou, 1129-51
This paper was part of SESSION VIII:Power & Politics in the Long Twelfth Century. It examined the charters of Geoffrey of
An 11th-Century Scandal
Complaints from Damian about the church’s unwillingness to confront the sexual behavior of the clergy, however, met with inaction. In 1049 Damian wrote to Pope Leo IX (1048-54) about the cancer of sexual abuse that was spreading through the church: boys and adolescents were being forced and seduced into performing acts of sodomy by priests and bishops; there were problems with sexual harassment among higher clergy; and many members of the clergy were keeping concubines.
Salutare Animas Nostras: The Ideologies Behind the Foundation of the Templars
The meteoric rise of the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Solomon (more commonly known as the Knights Templar) and their equally swift fall has fueled fanciful tales and scholarly research. The order promoted their mythological origins and the extreme charges leveled against them by Philip IV of France (1285-1314) created an atmosphere of speculation.
Noble and Urban Family-Structures in the Late Middle Ages in the Hungarian Kingdom
The everyday life of the clan people was filled with disputes over small plots, since it was the main duty of each generation to preserve and enlarge the lands of the clan. It was also the basic interest of the members of the clans to secure the survival of the clan by marriages that were fertile in every sense. It was a sign of the strength of the clan that the members had to consult before taking decisions in questions of marriage, inheritance.
Medieval Book History Week Lecture: “Practical Latin and Formal English in the 14th-15th Centuries”
This lecture is part of Medieval Book History Week. Renown Professor Jeremy Catto spoke about literacy and language in England during the later Middle Ages at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies at the University of Toronto.
Shifting Experiences: The Changing Roles of Women in the Italian, Lowland, and German Regions of Western Europe from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Period
Specifically, the thesis compares and analyzes the changing roles that women could employ economically, politically, socially, and religiously.
Customs and Lordship in Greater-Anjou
This is another Haskins conference paper from SESSION VI: Lordship. This paper focused on monasteries, changes in lordship and expectations between the lord and the monastery.
Of Kings and Popes and Law
In England, the period which most legal historians consider to be the key formative years of the common law was the reign of King Henry II.
“How Could You Recognise a Member of the Merchant Guild in Saint-Omer around 1100?”
This is another summary of a Haskins conference paper given in the session entitled: SESSION II: Who Do They Think They Are?. It deals with the customs of the guild of Saint-Omer
The Coleridge Hundred and its Medieval Court
Where possible, I have given examples of the earliest type of court documented, with examples of the type of case heard, and by whom they were heard, concentrating on the Manorial and Mayor’s Courts, which are the best documented, and whose Rolls nave been translated by the authors of my chief sources of reference.
Anglo-Saxon law and numismatics: A reassessment in the light of Patrick Wormald’s the Making of English Law
In this article, I wish to return to the references to coinage in the Anglo-Saxon laws in the light of Patrick Wormald’s important research on the laws, especially his The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century, which has made this difficult evidence much more penetrable to the non-specialist.
The status of women in Roman and Frankish law
Under both Roman and Frankish laws, women, although they did not have judicial equality with men, did have many legal rights and freedoms.
Tolerance of Usury
In the Middle Ages, could usury be tolerated in the law?
The Librarius and Libraire as Witnesses to the Evolving Book Trade in Ducal Brittany
In monasteries and cathedrals of the medieval West, the « custos librariae » functioned primarily as a custodian or keeper of bound codices, and we see a similar role emerge from extant medieval registers from Breton cathedral chapters.