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Law (Renaissance and Reformation)

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  1. Introduction
  2.  
  3. The period between the mid-14th and the mid-17th century saw the consolidation of both major European legal traditions. One was based on Roman and canon law and held sway as a common law (ius commune) on much of the European Continent. The other was rooted in royal writs and judgments that constituted the “common law” of England. The Romano-canonical law was based on venerable texts, chiefly those of the Corpus iuris civilis, compiled at the behest of the Emperor Justinian in the early 6th century, and the Corpus iuris canonici, assembled in the course of the Middle Ages by legal teachers and popes, with the process of assembly ending in the early 14th century. These texts served as the basis for a highly sophisticated and technical education in law in the medieval universities of Italy and southern France, whose graduates spread throughout Europe. The establishment of new universities from the 14th century—in Italy but also spreading to Germany, Spain, and elsewhere—only served to foster the geographical reach of the Romano-canonical law. This was also the point at which the teaching methods in the universities changed from the logical elaboration of authoritative texts (the so-called school of the glossators) in the direction of contemporary issues and practices (the era of the post-glossators and commentators). The greatest exponent of this trend was Bartolus of Sassoferrato (b. 1313–d. 1357), whose influence was such that it was said that to be a jurist was to be a “bartolist” (nemo iurista nisi bartolista) (see Jurisprudence and Legal Methodologies). The English law consisted of royal writs, Parliamentary statutes, customs, and precedents set in courts. These became in some regards increasingly rigid by the 14th and 15th centuries, but flexibility was introduced by means of the Royal Court of Chancery, which drew to some degree on Roman law notions. This was the so-called law of equity. The influence of royal courts and their remedies led to the waning of manorial and other local courts. The trend toward legal centralization in England was further fueled by the crown’s break with Catholicism. By the 17th century the common law tradition, including much of the intervening developments in equity, served as the bastion of those who would resist the pretensions of the Stuart monarchs, especially Charles I (b. 1625–d. 1649). Developments in the commercial economy of Europe, intellectual and cultural trends, and religious turmoil would all pose problems in areas such as property law, contracts, marital relations and family prerogatives, and judicial procedures, and would call forth adjustments to resolve them.
  4.  
  5. General Overviews
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  7. Legal history as a whole took a turn to the specialized and even arcane when the reigning paradigm of historical studies was that of the so-called Annales school, which pursued large-scale statistical studies within geographical and historical parameters. However, social historical studies and renewed interest in texts drove new and exciting types of inquiry from the 1980s onward. More recently, the emergence of the European Union and the Euro zone has sparked increasing interest in the legal past of Europe, including the degree to which the English common law is distinct or not based on that of the Continent.
  8.  
  9. European Legal History
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  11. Scholars such as Bellomo 1995 and Padoa-Schioppa 2003 argue that a shared legal heritage makes a shared legal system in the present possible, whereas authors such as Lesaffer 2009 and Robinson, et al. 2000 take the view that the English system is too different to assimilate to Continental legal forms. Stein 1984 places European legal developments in a wider anthropological framework, as does, to a lesser extent, Hespanha 2003.
  12.  
  13. Bellomo, Manlio. The Common Legal Past of Europe, 1000–1800. Translated by Lydia G. Cochrane. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1995.
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  15. Argues for a shared legal culture, as opposed to procedures, practices, and rules, prior to 19th-century national codes.
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  17. Hespanha, António Manuel. Introduzione alla storia del diritto europeo. 2d ed. Bologna, Italy: Il Mulino, 2003.
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  19. Brief but highly readable account that concentrates on 19th- and 20th-century developments after examining elements of law dealing with individual rights and abilities and the powers of the state.
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  21. Lesaffer, Randall. European Legal History: A Cultural and Political Perspective. Translated by Jan Arriens. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
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  23. Wide-ranging chronologically and sets a broad historical context to different eras of law.
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  25. Padoa-Schioppa, Antonio. Italia ed Europa nella storia del diritto. Bologna, Italy: Il Mulino, 2003.
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  27. Chronological account that begins after the fall of Rome, privileging developments in jurisprudence and practice in Italy, with perfunctory attention to England.
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  29. Robinson, O. F., T. D. Fergus, and W. M. Gordon. European Legal History: Sources and Institutions. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
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  31. Almost encyclopedic in detail. Considers modern legal developments nation by nation. Short but valuable appendix of sample documents in translation.
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  33. Stein, Peter. Legal Institutions: The Development of Dispute Settlement. London: Butterworths, 1984.
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  35. An overview from a legal anthropological point of view that carries into a general European legal history of procedures and substantive rules of persons, property, succession, obligations, and contract.
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  37. History of Roman Law
  38.  
  39. European historians, notably those housed in law faculties of universities, have long inquired into the history of their legal systems. Koschaker 1966 is just one example. Merryman 2007 is generally looking at the Roman law system for American legal students, Stein 1999 more broadly so for English students and practitioners.
  40.  
  41. Koschaker, Paul. Europa und das römische Recht. 4th ed. Munich: C. H. Beck, 1966.
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  43. Follows only the Roman tradition with special attention to its reception in German polities and universities in the 16th century.
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  45. Merryman, John Henry. The Civil Law Tradition: An Introduction to the Legal Systems of Europe and Latin America. 3d ed. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007.
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  47. Geared to explain to an Anglo-American audience how contemporary civil law systems differ from the English common law tradition. Concise with historical information on each aspect of law it covers.
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  49. Stein, Peter. Roman Law in European History. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
  50. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511814723Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  51. Succinct account ranging from Rome to modern codifications. Emphasis is on formal elements of law and jurisprudence, rather than substantive law.
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  53. History of English Common Law
  54.  
  55. Baker 2007 is probably the starting point for most who come to the subject of common law in England and her former colonies. As with Koschaker 1966 (cited under History of Roman Law), he is accounting for the current state of national law from a historical context. Caenegem 1988 is the outsider looking in and is aiming his analysis at a Continental audience. Gray 1963 provides an example of the extension of equity jurisdiction into common law courts, while also touching on an important issue in the history of English property law (see England).
  56.  
  57. Baker, John H. An Introduction to English Legal History. 4th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
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  59. Shows how English law developed as it also considers the full range of devices in law, including those later rendered obsolete. Standard work for those beginning a study of English legal history.
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  61. Caenegem, R. C. van Birth of the English Common Law. 2d ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
  62. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511607974Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  63. Brief account focusing on courts, writs and procedure, and the jury. Final chapter is a comparative study of English law and that of the European Continent.
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  65. Gray, Charles Montgomery. Copyhold, Equity, and the Common Law. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963.
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  67. Shows how equity law began to consider tenants’ rights in the early 16th century, and later how common law courts did the same.
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  69. History of Canon Law
  70.  
  71. Although the bulk of Brundage 1995 covers material well before the chronological period of concern to this bibliography, his is a coherent account of the development of canon law and its courts.
  72.  
  73. Brundage, James A. Medieval Canon Law. London: Longman, 1995.
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  75. Topically arranged survey, following three chapters that move chronologically through Gratian and the early schools of law to the 14th century.
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  77. Collections of Papers
  78.  
  79. Anthologies of legal history papers can be subject based or center on a type of text. Chittolini and Willoweit 1991 concentrates on local governmental legislation, while Ascheri, et al. 1999 and Baumgärtner 1995 deal with lawyers’ consultative writings for courts or governmental or ecclesiastical corporations. Political, social, and economic topics animate Guy and Beale 1984, Armstrong and Kirshner 2011, Mulholland and Pullan 2003, and Desan and Merrick 2009.
  80.  
  81. Armstrong, Lawrin, and Julius Kirshner. The Politics of Law in Late Medieval and Renaissance Italy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011.
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  83. Centering on Florence, essays argue for the importance of educated attorneys in the political as well as legal processes of an important city.
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  85. Ascheri, Mario, Ingrid Baumgärtner, and Julius Kirshner, eds. Legal Consulting in the Civil Law Tradition. Berkeley, CA: Robbins Collection, 1999.
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  87. Focus is largely on Italian juristic opinions. Makes the case for the importance of legal advice for court cases and the evolution of law generally.
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  89. Baumgärtner, Ingrid, ed. Consilia im späten Mittelalter: Zum historischen Aussagewert einer Quellengattung. Sigmaringen, Germany: Jan Thorbecke, 1995.
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  91. Uses complex legal arguments, generally rendered in consultation on actual cases, and argues for their broad historical applicability for the study of social and political history.
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  93. Chittolini, Giorgio, and Dietmar Willoweit, eds. Statuti città territori in Italia e Germania tra Medioevo ed età moderna. Bologna, Italy: Il Mulino, 1991.
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  95. Examines legislation and urban legislative bodies in comparative perspective.
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  97. Desan, Suzanne, and Jeffrey Merrick, eds. Family, Gender, and Law in Early Modern France. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009.
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  99. Papers on marriage, women’s activities in markets and courtrooms, guardianship of children, and legitimation of bastards.
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  101. Guy, J. A., and H. G. Beale, eds. Law and Social Change in British History: Papers Presented to the Bristol Legal History Conference, 14–17 July 1981. London: Royal Historical Society, 1984.
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  103. Papers of the fifth British Legal History Conference on the interaction of law and society.
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  105. Mulholland, Maureen, and Brian Pullan, eds. Judicial Tribunals in England and Europe, 1200–1700. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2003.
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  107. Considers the roles of judges and juries and the arguments advanced by litigants in the courts.
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  109. Sources
  110.  
  111. The true sources of legal history reside in archives and rare book collections. There are few published anthologies of materials, leave alone translations from the original Latin or law French. Some texts are scattered as appendix matter to books or articles. One of the few collections of sources as such is Baker and Milsom 2010 for English law. The Selden Society has published a number of volumes of sources from common law, such as Poos and Bonfield 1998. Cohen and Cohen 1993 has produced a rare and interesting set of trial records. Coing 1973 is an index of available sources. Opere digitalizzate and Digitale Bibliotek are two ongoing electronic archives of early printed works, largely in Latin. Seipp’s Legal History: The Year Books and Palmer’s Anglo-American Legal Tradition provide web access to many sources of common law history.
  112.  
  113. Baker, John H., and S. F. C. Milsom. Sources of English Legal History: Private Law to 1750. 2d ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
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  115. Outstanding collection showing courts at work in a wide variety of disputes. New edition incorporates recently uncovered materials.
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  117. Cohen, Thomas V., and Elizabeth S. Cohen. Words and Deeds in Renaissance Rome: Trials Before the Papal Magistrate. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993.
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  119. Extensive transcripts, translated, of eight trials, mainly criminal cases, with commentaries, from the 16th century.
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  121. Coing, Helmut, ed. Handbuch der Quellen und Literatur der neueren Privatrechtsgeschichte. 3 vols. Munich: Beck, 1973.
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  123. Valuable standard reference on legal sources from 1000 to 1900.
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  125. Digitale Bibliothek. Münchener DigitalisierungsZentrum.
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  127. Indexed alphabetically with precise and readable images. Printed editions of 14th- and 15th-century works are almost all incunabula.
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  129. Opere digitalizzate. Sezione di Storia del diritto medievale e moderno, Università degli Studi di Milano.
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  131. Need to know some Italian to navigate the site. Has over seven hundred manuscripts and early modern printed volumes.
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  133. Palmer, Robert. Anglo-American Legal Tradition.
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  135. Sources presented as digital photos from the manuscripts, organized by chronologically distinct “legal systems,” as opposed to the continuing legal tradition running through them. Requires knowledge of paleography.
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  137. Poos, L., and Lloyd Bonfield, eds. Select Cases in Manorial Courts, 1250–1550: Property and Family Law. London: Selden Society, 1998.
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  139. Latin with English translation on facing page. Develops the theme of the custom of the manor in contrast to royal common law.
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  141. Seipp, David J. Legal History: The Year Books.
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  143. Searchable website containing English year books, a form of court report, from 1265 to 1535.
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  145. Jurisprudence and Legal Methodologies
  146.  
  147. An erudite and scientific study of civil and canon law arose in the medieval universities. Grossi 1995 looks at the conceptual underpinnings of that jurisprudence in contrast to the earlier Middle Ages, while Lombardi 1967 is still a valuable study that carries the history of jurisprudence forward to the modern universities and national law codes. Kirshner 1975 and Baumgärtner 1987 provide succinct presentations of some of the difficulties in reading legal texts. Tierney 1997 is an important study of the origins of modern notions of rights. Baker 2000 shows what constituted legal education and books in England, where common law was not a university subject but was learned in apprenticeship mainly in the inns of court in London. Helmholz 2001 looks at the university-driven canon law, drawing rich contrasts to common law.
  148.  
  149. Baker, John H. The Common Law Tradition: Lawyers, Books and the Law. London: Hambledon, 2000.
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  151. On the profession and legal language ranging from the central inns of court to local courts.
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  153. Baumgärtner, Ingrid. “Consilia: Quellen zur Familie in Krise und Kontinuität.” In Die Familie als sozialer und historischer Verband: Untersuchungen zum Spätmittelalter und zur frühen Neuzeit. Edited by Peter-Johannes Schuler, 43–67. Sigmaringen, West Germany: Jan Thorbecke, 1987.
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  155. Argues for the utility of forensic legal opinions in the study of families in the late Middle Ages.
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  157. Grossi, Paolo. L‘Ordine giuridico medievale. Bari, Italy: Laterza, 1995.
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  159. Origins and growth of jurisprudence, civil and canonical, and how medieval cultural presumptions and concrete logic reshaped civil, canon, and Germanic legal legacies.
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  161. Helmholz, Richard H. Ius Commune in England: Four Studies. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
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  163. Explores law of sanctuary, compurgation oaths, mortuaries, and civil jurisdiction over clergy, arguing for ius commune’s influence beyond church courts.
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  165. Kirshner, Julius. “Some Problems in the Interpretation of Legal Texts re the Italian City-States.” Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte 19 (1975): 16–27.
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  167. Using examples, makes the case that legal texts cannot always be taken at face value for social and political analysis.
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  169. Lombardi, Luigi. Saggio sul diritto giurisprudenziale. Milan: Giuffrè, 1967.
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  171. Study from Roman times to the 20th century of the way educated legists conceived of and influenced law.
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  173. Tierney, Brian. The Idea of Natural Rights: Studies on Natural Rights, Natural Law, and Church Law, 1150–1625. Atlanta: Scholars, 1997.
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  175. Other than William of Occam, this book concentrates on legal thinkers. Argues that natural rights and natural law did not develop one from the other, but both were correlative to an underlying view of human beings.
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  177. Legal Humanism
  178.  
  179. Beginning with Francesco Petrarca in the 14th century, the historical and rhetorical approach to the Latin classics treated legal texts of Justinian as artifacts of the past rather than as living law and a rational standard of justice. Maffei 1956 is a survey of legal humanism working both from the ethical predispositions of those who embraced the classics and the frustrations they and others had with the operation of law in their communities. Manzin 1994 provides an account of Petrarca’s frustrations with law, both as a sometime law student and as a lover of classical Latin. The humanists’ take supported the efforts of entities such as the French monarchy to operate with some freedom from civil law’s terms and institutions when seen as relics of a different time and place. Rossi 2008b explores that dimension of the humanistic reading of law, while Rossi 2008a on Valla shows how one humanist attacked the non-classical Latinity of practicing jurists. Cavallar, et al. 1995 demonstrates that Valla’s criticism was not entirely fair or well directed. Kelley 1970 sees law treated historically as an intellectual springboard to modern thought. Quaglioni 2004 takes a parallel track in following a legal-philosophical approach to justice.
  180.  
  181. Cavallar, Osvaldo, Susanne Degenring, and Julius Kirshner. A Grammar of Signs: Bartolo da Sassoferrato’s “Tract on Insignia and Coats of Arms.” Berkeley, CA: Robbins Collection, 1995.
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  183. Juxtaposes a legal treatise of the 14th century against the humanistic critique of it in the 15th century by Lorenzo Valla. Valuable appendix of texts.
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  185. Kelley, Donald R. Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship: Language, Law, and History in the French Renaissance. New York: Columbia University Press, 1970.
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  187. Looks at humanist approaches to law as a historical artifact and the broader effect of that on historical writing.
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  189. Maffei, Domenico. Gli inizi dell’umanesimo giuridico. Milan: Giuffrè, 1956.
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  191. Still valuable overview of the intellectual origins of legal humanism.
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  193. Manzin, Maurizio. Il petrarchismo giuridico: Filosofia e logica del diritto agli inizi dell’umanesimo. Padua, Italy: CEDAM, 1994.
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  195. Philosophical and rhetorical exploration of Petrarch’s criticisms of law as taught and practiced in schools he attended as a youth.
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  197. Quaglioni, Diego. La giustizia nel Medioevo e nella prima età moderna. Bologna, Italy: Il Mulino, 2004.
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  199. Looks at the evolution of ideas of justice in the Middle Ages and the role of humanists in shaping a new paradigm of state justice.
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  201. Rossi, Giovanni. “Valla e il diritto: L‘Epistola contra Bartolum e le Elegantiae, percorsi di ricerca e proposte interpretative.” In Pubblicare il Valla. Edited by Mariangela Regoliosi, 507–599. Florence, Italy: Polistampa, 2008a.
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  203. Contrasts Valla’s concerns with Latin rhetoric with the Latin of academic law.
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  205. Rossi, Giovanni, ed. Il Rinascimento giuridico in Francia: Diritto, politica e storia: Atti del convegno internazionale di studi, Verona, 29 giugno–1. luglio 2006. Rome: Viella, 2008b.
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  207. Essays exploring ways in which humanists’ historicizing of the texts of Justinian opened the way to local custom and royal legislation.
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  209. Legislation
  210.  
  211. Alongside the ius commune developed in the universities, there was the ius proprium of the myriad political bodies and jurisdictions to be found in Europe. The Continent was not short of courts or of rules and customs of local provenance. The main concern for educated lawyers and notaries in practice and to a degree in teaching was to incorporate local laws into the framework of ius commune, which to them was a standard of justice and reason. Sbriccoli 1969 and Ascheri 1996 look at some of the interpretive devices employed in that effort in the context of legal problems that arose in cases in local courts. For most jurisdictions in Italy and broadly in southern Europe, ius commune filled in the holes in statutes and customs and provided basic institutions, terms, and definitions (e.g., dowry and testament). That was not the case for Venice or for much of northern Continental Europe, although ius commune gained status in most of the Holy Roman Empire in the course of the late 15th and 16th centuries. Tanzini 2007 shows how statutes changed in one city across more than a century and how much educated lawyers and ius commune contributed to those changes.
  212.  
  213. Ascheri, Mario. “Il ‘dottore’ e lo statuto: Una difesa interessata?” Rivista di storia del diritto italiano 69 (1996): 95–113.
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  215. A partially critical take on Sbriccoli 1969 and its reading of class interest in juristic interpretation of statutes.
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  217. Sbriccoli, Mario. L‘interpretazione dello statuto: Contributo allo studio della funzione dei giuristi nell’età comunale. Milan: Giuffrè, 1969.
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  219. Marxist interpretation of numerous legal tenets of statutory interpretation. Invaluable for its scope and depth.
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  221. Tanzini, Lorenzo. Il governo delle leggi: Norme e pratiche delle istituzioni a Firenze dalla fine del Duecento all’inizio del Quattrocento. Florence, Italy: Edifir, 2007.
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  223. Looks at the process of legislating, recording, and administering laws, as well as the role of trained attorneys in interpreting laws for courts and clients.
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  225. Legal Personnel
  226.  
  227. Lawyers and notaries employed their legal literacy in a variety of forms, as advocates before courts, as advisers to judges and clients, as agents of governments and guilds. They also often had their own guilds. Many of the publications below under various headings are also studies of the roles and impact of legal practitioners. Here the works are very directly concerned with the legal profession in some guise. Brundage 2008 is an indispensable account of the formation of professional standards and education, spreading from canon law courts, to the early 14th century. Cavanna 1978 surveys such roles in Italian cities. Nussdorfer 2009 studies notaries in Rome, mainly in connection with the courts of the city. Bartoli Langeli 2004 speaks to the legal faith placed in properly notarized documents, arguably the linchpin to the operation of ius commune and iura propria, and the courts. Montorzi 1984 studies the writings of some notaries and jurists, as well as others, theorizing about and acting at the connection between ius commune and local societies.
  228.  
  229. Bartoli Langeli, Attilio. “‘Scripsi et publicavi’: Il notaio come figure pubblica, l‘instrumentum come documento pubblico.” In Notai, miracoli e culto dei santi: Pubblicità e autenticazione del sacro tra xii e xv secolo. Edited by Raimondo Michetti, 55–71. Milan: Giuffrè, 2004.
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  231. Succinct account of the rise of a professional notariate in Italy as the repository of publica fides in their documents.
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  233. Brundage, James A. The Medieval Origins of the Legal Profession: Canonists, Civilians, and Courts. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.
  234. DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226077611.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  235. Follows the parallel developments on the Continent and in England of court procedures, education of lawyers and others, and ethical precepts for practicing advocates and judges.
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  237. Cavanna, Adriano. “Il ruolo del giurista nell’età del diritto comune.” Studia et documenta historiae et iuris 44 (1978): 95–138.
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  239. Survey of roles trained lawyers played beyond academia in governments, courts, guilds, and markets.
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  241. Montorzi, Mario. Fides in rem publicam: Ambiguità e tecniche del diritto comune. Naples, Italy: Jovene, 1984.
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  243. Considers fides (fidelity) as a feudal relationship and its conversion to a public political element and corresponding changes in law, practice, and legal documentation.
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  245. Nussdorfer, Laurie. Brokers of Public Trust: Notaries in Early Modern Rome. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009.
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  247. Studies the role of notaries in Capitoline courts in constructing legal records for officials and clients.
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  249. Particular Figures
  250.  
  251. Reconstructing the lives of jurists is not only a difficult task but also not of much interest to many legal historians, whose academic mission is concentrated on legal matters. So there have been few such studies, except for the more prominent legal thinkers. Canning 1987 is an example, as this work examines the political thought of a major jurist. Rossi 2009, Bargagli 2000, and Chambers and Dean 1997 look at less famous 15th-century figures who had an impact on a practical local level. These are more representative of the working and living biographies of jurists of the period. Cavallar 1991 is a study of Guicciardini that follows the legal career of a person much better known for other endeavors and writings. Zordan 1976 pursues a similar study of one figure whose work influenced trial procedures in the Veneto, the region ruled by Venice. Rowan 1987 follows an important German jurist who was also a humanist and correspondent of Erasmus.
  252.  
  253. Bargagli, Roberta. Bartolomeo Sozzini, giurista e politico (1436–1506). Milan: Giuffrè, 2000.
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  255. More than a professional biography of a scion of an illustrious Sienese family.
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  257. Canning, Joseph. The Political Thought of Baldus de Ubaldis. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
  258. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511523113Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  259. Examines one dimension of the legal commentaries, consilia, and treatises of the most important jurist of the late 14th century.
  260. Find this resource:
  261. Cavallar, Osvaldo. Francesco Guicciardini, giurista: I Ricordi degli onorari. Milan: Giuffrè, 1991.
  262. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  263. Study of Guicciardini’s active career early in his life, before he went on to governmental offices and to write his famous histories based on his legal opinions and his account books.
  264. Find this resource:
  265. Chambers, David S., and Trevor Dean. Clean Hands and Rough Justice: An Investigating Magistrate in Renaissance Italy. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997.
  266. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  267. Study of Beltramino Cusadri (b. 1425–d. 1500) as magistrate for the Gonzaga in Mantua and the Este in Ferrara, investigating crimes and facing accusations of corruption.
  268. Find this resource:
  269. Rossi, Giovanni, ed. Bartolomeo Cipolla: Un giurista veronese del Quattrocento tra cattedra, foro e luoghi del potere. Padua, Italy: CEDAM, 2009.
  270. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  271. Essays on an important figure both as teacher of law and as practitioner before courts and governmental bodies, including biographical and family information.
  272. Find this resource:
  273. Rowan, Steven W. Ulrich Zasius: A Jurist in the German Renaissance, 1466–1535. Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1987.
  274. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  275. Study of a jurist closely involved in the transformation of law in Germany toward the ius commune tradition.
  276. Find this resource:
  277. Zordan, Giorgio. Il diritto e la procedura criminale nel Tractatus de Maleficiis di Angelo Gambiglioni. Padua, Italy: CEDAM, 1976.
  278. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  279. Argues for the influence of a 15th-century jurist’s major work in shaping criminal trials.
  280. Find this resource:
  281. Courts and Procedures
  282.  
  283. The fact that courts exist does not mean that people will bring their disputes and grievances to them. Extrajudicial devices, such as mediation and arbitration, were readily available, and recourse to courts was only one option for a prospective litigant. Nor need one carry the judicial procedure to completion. It could be, as it often is today, a step that ends in a settlement or a plea bargain. Fowler-Magerl 1984 provides an overview of procedural forms set in academic jurisprudence, which set standards for courts using canonical and civil law. Smail 2003 looks at the use of courts in Marseille with such considerations in mind. Martone 1984 studies the incorporation of extrajudicial settlements within ius commune and how the law and courts stood prepared to back up and enforce arbitrations, if need be. Ascheri 1989, Fosi 2011, and Astarita 1999 study aspects of procedure, civil but also criminal, in particular courts and social contexts.
  284.  
  285. Ascheri, Mario. Tribunali, giuristi e istituzioni dal medioevo all’età moderna. Bologna, Italy: Il Mulino, 1989.
  286. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  287. Studies courts and procedures, notably in Siena and Florence, and consultative role of jurists. Important appendices list jurisprudential writings and consilia collections, 15th to 18th centuries.
  288. Find this resource:
  289. Astarita, Tommaso. Village Justice: Community, Family, and Popular Culture in Early Modern Italy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999.
  290. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  291. Local courts of one village applying state and ecclesiastical rules in contrast to local senses of justice, family, and gender.
  292. Find this resource:
  293. Fosi, Irene. Papal Justice: Subjects and Courts in the Papal State, 1500–1750. Translated by Thomas V. Cohen. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2011.
  294. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  295. Translation of La giustizia del papa: Sudditi e tribunali nello Stato Pontificio in età moderna, published in 2007. Procedures, personnel, and cases of the pontifical courts in secular rule, where the same problems were faced that other governments faced.
  296. Find this resource:
  297. Fowler-Magerl, Linda. Ordo iudiciorum vel ordo iudiciarius: Begriff und Literaturgaltung. Ius Commune Sonderheft 19. Frankfurt: V. Klostermann, 1984.
  298. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  299. Concentrates on academic elaborations of procedure spurred largely by ecclesiastical canons.
  300. Find this resource:
  301. Martone, Luciano. Arbiter-Arbitrator: Forme di giustizia privata nell’età del diritto comune. Naples, Italy: Jovene, 1984.
  302. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  303. Development of law and legal guarantees around supposedly extrajudicial means to resolve disputes.
  304. Find this resource:
  305. Smail, Daniel Lord. The Consumption of Justice: Emotions, Publicity, and Legal Culture in Marseille, 1264–1423. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003.
  306. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  307. Approaches use of courts from the perspectives of the litigators in personal disputes and matters of debt.
  308. Find this resource:
  309. Criminal Procedure
  310.  
  311. Within ius commune, largely through developments in canon law, an inquisitory procedure arose alongside the long-standing accusatory procedure. In the latter, litigants presented evidence and arguments before the courts (although serially and in writing, rather than in a confrontational trial), as well as initiated the process with an accusation of wrong or loss. Inquisitory procedure was judicially directed and driven, but it too had its rules and records, including on when or if to apply torture. Langbein 2006 is a book examining the rules relating to torture, as well as the devices employed. Vallerani 2012 contrasts accusatory and inquisitory procedures at work in two Italian cities. Cerutti 2003 examines an abbreviated, yet still complex, procedure that sought in theory to get around procedural delays. Alessi 2001 is a sweeping comparative study of criminal procedures across Europe from the Middle Ages to the 19th century. Langbein 1974, on Renaissance criminal prosecution, is likewise a comparative look at Continental Europe and England. He comes down in favor of the English criminal trial, which was both accusatory and confrontational, in contrast to inquisitory justice. The role of witness testimony, mainly in criminal proceedings, is the subject of Lepsius 2003. The author establishes the link between public responsibility to prosecute crimes and witness presentations as vital to that. Peters 1989 examines the Spanish Inquisition against the context of the history of legal procedure and the enduring myth that has led to the miswriting of its history. Kelly 1989 reminds scholars that inquisition was first and foremost a judicial procedure meant to replace accusatory practice.
  312.  
  313. Alessi, Giorgia. Il processo penale: Profilo storico. Bari, Italy: Laterza, 2001.
  314. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  315. Examines procedures and notions of procedural justice across Europe from medieval precedents to the French Revolution.
  316. Find this resource:
  317. Cerutti, Simona. Giustizia sommaria: Pratiche e ideali di giustizia in una società di Ancien Régime (Torino, xviii secolo). Milan: Feltrinelli, 2003.
  318. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  319. Argues that the more abbreviated summary procedure, first introduced in canon law in the early 14th century, became a tool of legal and political control.
  320. Find this resource:
  321. Kelly, Henry Ansgar. “Inquisition and the Prosecution of Heresy: Misconceptions and Abuses.” Church History 58 (1989): 439–451.
  322. DOI: 10.2307/3168207Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  323. Important argument that inquisition was a procedure for general use.
  324. Find this resource:
  325. Langbein, John H. Prosecuting Crime in the Renaissance: England, Germany, France. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974.
  326. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  327. Contrasts England’s amalgamation of public investigation with jury trials to Continental procedure.
  328. Find this resource:
  329. Langbein, John H. Torture and the Law of Proof: Europe and England in the Ancien Regime. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006.
  330. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  331. Studies instruments of torture as well as rules for its application, and examines torture’s displacement by other means of proof.
  332. Find this resource:
  333. Lepsius, Susanne. Von Zweifeln zur Überzeugung: Der Zeugenbeweis im gelehrten Recht ausgehend von der Abhandlung des Bartolus von Sassoferrato. Frankfurt: V. Klostermann, 2003.
  334. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  335. Discussion of Bartolus’s teachings on witness testimony as proof, which proved seminal for later thinkers.
  336. Find this resource:
  337. Peters, Edward. Inquisition. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989.
  338. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  339. An argument that the inquisition was not the unjust monster it was later made out to be.
  340. Find this resource:
  341. Vallerani, Massimo. Medieval Public Justice. Translated by Sarah Rubin Blanshei. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2012.
  342. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  343. Vital study of the use of accusatory and inquisitory forms of criminal procedure in Bologna and Perugia, 13th and 14th centuries. Translation of La giustizia pubblica medievale (Bologna, Italy: Il Mulino, 2005).
  344. Find this resource:
  345. Criminal Courts
  346.  
  347. Beyond the development of procedures, there is the problem of determining how well courts followed them and managed to dispense something approaching justice. Netterstrom and Poulsen 2007 assembles papers on the extrajudicial pursuit of criminal matters, which fed into accusatory processes such as remained prevalent in northern Europe. Dean 2007 casts his eye widely over northern Italy to see how courts prosecuted violence, sex crimes, and theft. Zorzi 1988 discusses Florence’s courts of criminal jurisdiction and the increasing politicization toward the use of local elites as judges, tending them away from ius commune and its trained judges brought in from elsewhere. Yet Stern 2004 finds in a comparison of judicial discretion in Florence and Venice that Florence’s courts were more rule-bound and thus fairer. Stern 1994 looks at criminal statutes and their enforcement in Florence. Ruggiero 1980 is a comparable study for Venice, although limited to crimes of violence.
  348.  
  349. Dean, Trevor. Crime and Justice in Late Medieval Italy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
  350. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511496455Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  351. Survey of sources, legal and other, followed by studies of prosecution of crimes of violence, sex, and theft.
  352. Find this resource:
  353. Netterstrom, Jeppe Büchert, and Bjorn Poulsen, eds. Feud in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press, 2007.
  354. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  355. Geographically diverse papers discussing feud in anthropological terms and the efforts, legal and extralegal, to resolve conflicts.
  356. Find this resource:
  357. Ruggiero, Guido. Violence in Early Renaissance Venice. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1980.
  358. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  359. Studies prosecution of physical and verbal violence across different courts and different social classes.
  360. Find this resource:
  361. Stern, Laura Ikins. The Criminal Law System of Medieval and Renaissance Florence. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.
  362. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  363. A study of both Florence’s statutory law and her courts, with a sampling of cases from the Podestà’s court in the 1420s.
  364. Find this resource:
  365. Stern, Laura Ikins. “Politics and Law in Renaissance Florence and Venice.” American Journal of Legal History 46 (2004): 209–234.
  366. DOI: 10.2307/3692441Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  367. Discusses differences in political influence on courts and use of judicial discretion, concluding Florence’s criminal justice was more equitable.
  368. Find this resource:
  369. Zorzi, Andrea. L‘amministrazione della giustizia penale nella repubblica fiorentina: Aspetti e problemi. Florence, Italy: Olschki, 1988.
  370. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  371. Brief study of the insertion of courts controlled by Florence’s elite and less open to the influence of learned law and those trained in it.
  372. Find this resource:
  373. Commercial Law, Contracts, and Obligations
  374.  
  375. Important developments leading to the modern law of contracts occurred during the Middle Ages and were cemented into practice in the growing commercial economy of Renaissance and early modern Europe. Yet contract was only one way in which obligations (one of the broad categories of law, which in the civil law tradition was divided into persons, things, obligations, and actions) arose. Zimmermann 1996 explores the entire realm of obligations in civil law, as does Ibbetson 1999 for the English common law. Ibbetson 1984 on Slade’s case is an example of English law’s need for new devices to enforce contracts as commerce grew and became more complex. This is a thread Simpson 1987 follows in his thorough account of contract law. Safley 2000 and Kuehn 2011 explore the legislated obligations of kin for debts, which both facilitated extensions of credit in various markets and placed family members in jeopardy for others’ actions. Caenegem 1992 broadly covers private law across the centuries.
  376.  
  377. Caenegem, R. C. Van An Historical Introduction to Private Law. Translated by D. E. L. Johnston. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
  378. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511622038Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  379. Begins and ends with modern law, but delves into medieval and early modern antecedents.
  380. Find this resource:
  381. Ibbetson, David J. “16th Century Contract Law: Slade’s Case in Context.” Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 4 (1984): 295–317.
  382. DOI: 10.1093/ojls/4.3.295Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  383. Problems of debt litigation complicated by an overlap of two different actions to enforce contracts.
  384. Find this resource:
  385. Ibbetson, David J. A Historical Introduction to the Law of Obligations. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
  386. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  387. Considers the medieval law of debts, torts, contracts, and quasi-contracts and early modern and modern developments to circumvent limitations in medieval law.
  388. Find this resource:
  389. Kuehn, Thomas. “Debt and Bankruptcy in Florence: Statutes and Cases.” Quaderni Storici 137 (August 2011): 355–390.
  390. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  391. Kin liability for debts, even of bankrupts, often proved limited when lawyers interpreted statutes, more so than statutory texts would seem to indicate.
  392. Find this resource:
  393. Safley, Thomas Max. “Bankruptcy: Family and Finance in Early Modern Augsburg.” Journal of European Economic History 29 (2000): 53–73.
  394. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  395. Notes how liability of kin for another’s default led to attempts in court to cover family reputation.
  396. Find this resource:
  397. Simpson, A. W. B. A History of the Common Law of Contract: The Rise of the Action of Assumpsit. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.
  398. DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198255734.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  399. Focuses on assumpsit as the action crafted in the 16th century to deal with contractual agreements not otherwise recognized and thus actionable in common law.
  400. Find this resource:
  401. Zimmermann, Reinhard. The Law of Obligations: Roman Foundations of the Civilian Tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
  402. DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198764267.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  403. While it deals mainly with Roman law, the book makes constant allusions to modern issues and ends with discussion of modern law.
  404. Find this resource:
  405. Law of Property
  406.  
  407. Classical law knew the distinction between ownership and possession. Feudalism in particular and Germanic legal ideas more generally complicated legal ownership, creating overlapping and simultaneous forms of different ownership in more than one person. Grossi 1992 is the result of a career spent examining the evolution of ownership toward a modern sense of single ownership and its legal prerogatives (the bourgeois notion of property). Willoweit 1974 is focused on specific terms in ius commune. Watson 1989 is a comparative study of an expanding but unfortunate area of early modern property law.
  408.  
  409. Grossi, Paolo. Il dominio e le cose: Percezioni medievali e moderne dei diritti reali. Milan: Giuffrè, 1992.
  410. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  411. Collected papers by the foremost modern scholar of the history of property law, contrasting medieval forms of shared or divided ownership with modern rules of absolute ownership.
  412. Find this resource:
  413. Watson, Alan. Slave Law in the Americas. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1989.
  414. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  415. Comparative study of systems built on Roman legal precedents versus the English system, which had no legal precedents for slavery and was thus free to conform to the racist character of colonial slavery.
  416. Find this resource:
  417. Willoweit, Dietmar. “Dominium und Proprietas: Zur Entwicklung des Eigentumsbegriffs in der mittelalterlichen und neu zeitlichen Rechtswissenschaft.” Historisches Jahrbuch der Goerres-Gesellschaft zur Pflege der Wissenschaft im Katholischen Deutschland 94 (1974): 131–156.
  418. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  419. Follows the coupling of the terms dominium and proprietas, both broadly connoting ownership in the teachings of major jurists.
  420. Find this resource:
  421. England
  422.  
  423. Germanic and feudal forms of property were most solidly embedded in England, thanks to the Norman Conquest, which imported feudal property relations over the entire country. The holding of fiefs from the king became the key to the development of a distinctive law of property, traced by Milsom 1972. Milsom lays out the royal common law’s remedies for possession and the feudal bases to property. Simpson 1986 is a survey of all aspects of land law from the Middle Ages. Lyon 1956 provides an economic, political, and legal account of the decline of feudal landholding in England. In the context of a debate about the appearance of land markets, large farms, and commercial capitalism in England, Hoyle 1990 finds that copyhold rights gave tenants opportunities to accumulate land.
  424.  
  425. Hoyle, R. W. “Tenure and the Land Market in Early Modern England: Or a Late Contribution to the Brenner Debate.” Economic History Review 43 (1990): 1–20.
  426. DOI: 10.2307/2596510Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  427. A succinct treatment of the legal disadvantages of copyhold for lords and tenants in the economic situation of the 16th and 17th centuries.
  428. Find this resource:
  429. Lyon, Bryce D. From Fief to Indenture: The Transition from Feudal to Non-feudal Contract in Western Europe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1956.
  430. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  431. Traces the multiple uses of “fief-rente” and its general replacement of fiefs in land and the parallel replacement of homage by indenture.
  432. Find this resource:
  433. Milsom, S. F. C. The Legal Framework of English Feudalism. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1972.
  434. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  435. Working from cases, this book examines the rights and duties of lords and tenants and the consequences of Henry II’s insertion of royal procedures into land law.
  436. Find this resource:
  437. Simpson, A. W. B. History of the Land Law. 2d ed. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.
  438. DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198255376.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  439. Thorough account of ownership, possession, use, easements, and other features of law from the 17th to the 20th centuries.
  440. Find this resource:
  441. Private Law
  442.  
  443. Under this heading can be grouped the areas of law arising from domestic relations, grouped around birth, death, and marriage. Important developments occurred in these areas in medieval and early modern law.
  444.  
  445. Family and Parenthood
  446.  
  447. The family is and was an important seat of legal standing and powers. Bonfield 2001 provides a survey of changes in law over several centuries. In the civil law tradition, personhood was rooted in the family and fully defined in the person of the paterfamilias. Villata 1995 details how medieval law, also influenced by canon law notions of personhood rooted in the immortal soul, shaped legal standing. Two works here look at the rights and obligations arising between fathers and sons: Bellomo 1968 from an exclusively legal standpoint and Kuehn 1982 from a standpoint of legal practice of emancipation from paternal authority. While paternal power was not what it had been in Roman times, it was still a formidable legal device.
  448.  
  449. Bellomo, Manlio. Problemi di diritto familiare nell’età dei comuni. Milan: Giuffrè, 1968.
  450. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  451. Looks at paternal power over sons and their property, including mutual liabilities between them.
  452. Find this resource:
  453. Bonfield, Lloyd. “Developments in European Family Law.” In The History of the European Family, Vol. 1: Family Life in Early Modern Times, 1500–1789. Edited by David I. Kertzer and Marzio Barbagli, 87–124. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001.
  454. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  455. Concise survey of changes in marriage law, inheritance, and legal agency of women, arguing for importance of legal sources in the study of family history.
  456. Find this resource:
  457. Kuehn, Thomas. Emancipation in Late Medieval Florence. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1982.
  458. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  459. Shows the utility of law to families through study of the device by which children were freed from paternal legal authority.
  460. Find this resource:
  461. Villata, Gigliola di Renzo. “Persone e famiglia nel diritto medievale e moderno.” In Digesto italiano delle Discipline Privatistiche, Vol. 13: Sezione Civile. 4th ed. Edited by Rodolfo Sacco. 457–527. Turin, Italy: UTET, 1995.
  462. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  463. Explores the notion of the father as the sole true legal person to the growing, yet still limited, prerogatives accorded wives and children, whose disabilities were the result of age and gender.
  464. Find this resource:
  465. Illegitimacy
  466.  
  467. Paternal power extended only over children born of one’s wife, unless there was an adoption or legitimation of an illegitimate child. Such children faced prejudices and legal disadvantages from the circumstances of their birth but also had the advantage of a blood connection if a relationship was admitted or proven. In England a bastard was filius nullius (child of no one) in common law: but as Helmholz 1977 demonstrates, church courts could step in and order support for them. Leineweber 1978 details the laws covering illegitimates, while Kuehn 2002 explores the social and legal fate of such children in a society sometimes seen as hospitable to them. Kuehn 1998 determines that adoption, which placed a child under paternal power and bestowed correlative rights to inherit, was rarely used in the early modern world, although it continued to be part of ius commune.
  468.  
  469. Helmholz, Richard H. “Support Orders, Church Courts and the Role of Filius Nullius.” University of Virginia Law Review 63 (1977): 431–448.
  470. DOI: 10.2307/1072357Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  471. Argues that canon law mitigated the harsh lack of status for bastards in common law.
  472. Find this resource:
  473. Kuehn, Thomas. “L‘Adoption à Florence à la fin du Moyen Âge.” Médievales 35 (1998): 69–81.
  474. DOI: 10.3406/medi.1998.1430Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  475. Documents the rarity of full legal adoption as opposed to fostering or apprenticing, which were common.
  476. Find this resource:
  477. Kuehn, Thomas. Illegitimacy in Renaissance Florence. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002.
  478. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  479. Study that moves beyond legal rules to the social recognition, differential treatment, and occasional legitimation of Florentine illegitimate children.
  480. Find this resource:
  481. Leineweber, Anke. Die rechtliche Beziehung des nichtehelichen Kindes zu seinem Erzeuger in der geschichte des Privatrechts. Königstein, West Germany: Peter Hanstein, 1978.
  482. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  483. Study of civil law, statutes, and customs regarding illegitimacy, including the different status of illegitimates as natural or spurious.
  484. Find this resource:
  485. Marriage
  486.  
  487. In the course of the Middle Ages the church took over the law relating to marriage, largely on the grounds that it was a sacrament. Church law predicated marriage on the free consent of both spouses, thus playing down the sexual relationship (i.e., consummation) and subverting parental or other control over marital choices in theory, and in practice at times. As witnesses were not required, the problem of so-called clandestine marriages plagued church courts. In practice, however, parents retained a great deal of control, if only because they had real control over property. During the Reformation Protestants challenged the sacramentality of marriage and restored some consensual powers to parents. Limited possibilities for divorce were also conceded, in clear contrast to its total prohibition earlier. The Catholic response, devised at the Council of Trent (meeting discontinuously, 1545–1563), was to demand that vows be exchanged before a priest and witnesses. Trent thus draws a bright line through the history of marriage law and related ceremonies, as Lombardi 2001 demonstrates. McSheffrey 2006 does not deal so much with aberrant behavior and resulting cases but seeks to see marriage as an element in civic life. Cristellon 2010 and Donahue 2007 explore pre-Tridentine court cases. Seidel Menchi and Quaglioni 2000, Seidel Menchi and Quaglioni 2001, Seidel Menchi and Quaglioni 2004, and Seidel Menchi and Quaglioni 2006 contain papers based on court cases both before and after Trent on a variety of marriage-related issues: clandestine marriages, adultery and other marital transgressions, separations and annulments, rapes, seductions, abductions, and elopements. Kelly 1976 not only examines famous cases, it provides an interesting account of their canon law procedures.
  488.  
  489. Cristellon, Cecilia. La carità e l‘eros: Il matrimonio, la Chiesa, i suoi giudici nella Venezia del Rinascimento (1420–1545). Bologna, Italy: Il Mulino, 2010.
  490. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  491. Pre-Tridentine Venetian marriage court, its procedures, taking of witness testimony, judges, and cases in which consent of spouses was problematic.
  492. Find this resource:
  493. Donahue, Charles Jr. Law, Marriage, and Society in the Later Middle Ages. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
  494. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  495. Marriage cases, organized by five different episcopal courts, allowing broad comparison and contrast of England and northeastern Francophone areas.
  496. Find this resource:
  497. Kelly, Henry Ansgar. The Matrimonial Trials of Henry VIII. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1976.
  498. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  499. Examines full trial records of Henry VIII’s three annulments as canon law cases, beyond their political and religious effects.
  500. Find this resource:
  501. Lombardi, Daniela. Matrimoni di antico regime. Bologna, Italy: Il Mulino, 2001.
  502. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  503. Study of civil and canon laws of marriage, the legislation of the Council of Trent, and changes in wedding rituals and court cases.
  504. Find this resource:
  505. McSheffrey, Shannon. Marriage, Sex, and Civic Culture in Late Medieval London. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006.
  506. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  507. Uses legal and other sources to explore marital and extramarital unions within the social realities of paternal control of marriage choices and canon law’s prohibition of divorce.
  508. Find this resource:
  509. Seidel Menchi, Silvana, and Diego Quaglioni, eds. Coniugi nemici: La separazione in Italia dal xii al xviii secolo. Bologna, Italy: Il Mulino, 2000.
  510. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  511. Examines cases across three centuries in which parties sought judicially approved separation and return of property, generally alleging spousal abuse.
  512. Find this resource:
  513. Seidel Menchi, Silvana, and Diego Quaglioni, eds. Matrimoni in dubbio: Unioni controverse e nozze clandestine in Italia dal xiv al xviii secolo. Bologna, Italy: Il Mulino, 2001.
  514. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  515. Essays concerning marriages whose status as such was in question, from different Italian communities.
  516. Find this resource:
  517. Seidel Menchi, Silvana, and Diego Quaglioni, eds. Trasgressioni: Seduzione, concubinato, adulterio, bigamia (xiv–xviii secolo). Bologna, Italy: Il Mulino, 2004.
  518. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  519. Cases involving illicit unions, such as concubinage or bigamy.
  520. Find this resource:
  521. Seidel Menchi, Silvana, and Diego Quaglioni, eds. I tribunali del matrimonio (secoli xv–xviii). Bologna, Italy: Il Mulino, 2006.
  522. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  523. Essays examining numbers of types of cases in different jurisdictions and the consistency of procedures applied by ecclesiastical courts, before and after Trent.
  524. Find this resource:
  525. Dowry and Marital Property
  526.  
  527. Dowry became essential for marriage in the ius commune, even if it were only symbolic in the case of a poor woman. The dowry was provided to the husband by the bride’s family, usually her father. The husband pledged to return it when the marriage ended (by the death of one spouse). Kirshner 1991a explores that problem in light of local laws allowing a surviving husband to keep the dowry. Kirshner 1991b is a reminder that there were other property considerations circulating around marriage and corresponding problems of legal control. Kreutz 1996, while largely about medieval legal practices, nicely contrasts marital property in Germanic and Roman law. Bellomo 1961 is the standard account of dowry law, including the general tendency in Italian communities to make the dowry the woman’s only legal inheritance from her family. The corresponding English institution of dower gave a wife a charge on her husband’s assets and thus support in widowhood. Hanawalt 2007 details the workings of dower in English marriages, while Howell 1998 studies a change of practices and law in Douai: from a marital property regime akin to the English toward one more like dowry and its written guarantees. Erickson 1993 does more than discuss marital property, as the author brings in broader issues of property and inheritance.
  528.  
  529. Bellomo, Manlio. Ricerche sui rapporti patrimoniali tra coniugi: Contributo alla storia della famiglia medievale. Milan: Giuffrè, 1961.
  530. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  531. Still the best single volume on marital property arrangements in law, covering dowry and more.
  532. Find this resource:
  533. Erickson, Amy Louise. Women and Property in Early Modern England. London and New York: Routledge, 1993.
  534. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  535. Property rights of women before, during, and after marriage.
  536. Find this resource:
  537. Hanawalt, Barbara A. The Wealth of Wives: Women, Law, and Economy in Late Medieval London. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
  538. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  539. Studies women and marriage mainly from the perspective of wives’ control over property, access to markets, and economic activities.
  540. Find this resource:
  541. Howell, Martha C. The Marriage Exchange: Property, Social Place, and Gender in Cities of the Low Countries, 1300–1550. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.
  542. DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226355177.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  543. Traces legal reforms that extended male control of marital property and made husbands’ property distinct from wives.’
  544. Find this resource:
  545. Kirshner, Julius. “Maritus Lucretur Dotem Uxoris Sue Premortue in Late Medieval Florence.” Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte 108 (1991a): 111–155.
  546. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  547. Husbands’ rights to dowries of predeceased wives in ius commune and the broadening of those rights in local statutes in the 14th and 15th centuries.
  548. Find this resource:
  549. Kirshner, Julius. “Materials for a Gilded Cage: Non-Dotal Assets in Florence, 1300–1500.” In The Family in Italy from Antiquity to the Present. Edited by David I. Kertzer and Richard P. Saller, 184–207. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991b.
  550. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  551. Study of the relative control of husbands over their wives’ property.
  552. Find this resource:
  553. Kreutz, Barbara M. “The Twilight of Morgengabe.” In Portraits of Medieval and Renaissance Living: Essays in Honor of David Herlihy. Edited by Samuel K. Cohn Jr. and Steven A. Epstein, 131–147. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996.
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  555. Contrasts the Lombard provision for a wife of one quarter of her husband’s property with Roman dowry, which came from her family and remained separate from the husband’s goods.
  556. Find this resource:
  557. Inheritance Law
  558.  
  559. Arguably inheritance was the most complex area of law. More of the Roman law texts were dedicated to aspects of inheritance than anything else, and courts faced more cases on that account than any other. Inheritance took one of two forms: intestate when there was no will drawn up, and then general rules of order of succession and equal division for multiple heirs came into play; or testate, in which case a decedent’s desires were supposed to rule from the grave, so to speak. Because testacy tinkered with the rules and often provided differential bequests to elements outside the family, it was more liable to land in court. Romano 1994 details different inheritance practices, notably in testacy, between the cities of northern Italy and the kingdoms in the south of the peninsula. He thus builds a contrast that Niccolai 1940 had left implicit. Kirshner 2000 looks at one troublesome area of law, the right of a testator to disinherit an expectant heir, and he concludes that it was a rarely and only carefully employed device. Kuehn 2008 examines the rights of heirs to refuse their inheritance, largely on the grounds that it was burdened with debts in contrast to assets being not worth the effort.
  560.  
  561. Kirshner, Julius. “Baldus de Ubaldis on Disinheritance: Contexts, Controversies, Consilia.” Ius Commune: Zeitschrift für Europäische Rechtsgeschichte 27 (2000): 119–214.
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  563. Considers important jurist’s teachings and forensic interventions on a rarely used legal device.
  564. Find this resource:
  565. Kuehn, Thomas. Heirs, Kin, and Creditors in Renaissance Florence. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
  566. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511511806Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  567. Explores heirs’ rights to refuse an inheritance as a means to avoid debts and as family strategy.
  568. Find this resource:
  569. Niccolai, Franco. La formazione del diritto successorio negli statuti comunali del territorio lombardo-tosco. Milan: Giuffrè, 1940.
  570. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  571. Contrasts Lombard and Roman rules and follows statutory accommodations of them through Italy north of Rome.
  572. Find this resource:
  573. Romano, Andrea. Famiglia, successioni e patrimonio familiare nell’Italia medievale e moderna. Turin, Italy: Giappichelli, 1994.
  574. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  575. Within common civil law heritage, draws contrast in rules and practices of succession between northern Italy and Sicily.
  576. Find this resource:
  577. Wills and Inheritance
  578.  
  579. The Roman testament underwent some changes in the Middle Ages and was extended to regions of Germanic law, largely through the offices of the Church, which had an interest in probating bequests to charities and ecclesiastical institutions. In the early modern period, testaments were the chief means of erecting perpetual entail (fideicommissum in the civil law tradition) on family property and in most circumstances also imposing primogeniture. The property had to be passed to the next heir in the male line and could not be alienated. Piccialuti 1999, Calonaci 2005, and Zorzoli 1992 study wills and cases as well as the general law of such entails in civil law for different communities. Tria 1945 is a useful synopsis of the legal history behind practices that truly began to flourish in the late 15th and 16th centuries. Lumia-Ostinelli 2003 provides a broad historical perspective on inheritance practices in Siena leading to the adoption of fideicommissa there. Clavero 1994 is an account of how the very un-Roman idea of perpetual entail and primogeniture entered the ius commune.
  580.  
  581. Calonaci, Stefano. Dietro lo scudo incantato: I fedecommessi di famiglia e il trionfo della borghesia fiorentina (1400 ca–1750). Florence, Italy: Le Monnier, 2005.
  582. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  583. Changing uses and legal parameters of legal devices of entail from the 16th through the 18th centuries.
  584. Find this resource:
  585. Clavero, Bartolomé. “Dictum beati: A proposito della cultura del lignaggio.” Quaderni Storici 86 (August 1994): 335–363.
  586. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  587. Points to a supposed letter of St. Bernard as the source legitimizing primogeniture, which was otherwise contrary to the Roman law of inheritance.
  588. Find this resource:
  589. Lumia-Ostinelli, Gianna. “‘Ut cippus domus magis conservetur’: La successione a Siena tra statuti e testamenti (secoli xii–xvii).” Archivio storico italiano 161 (2003): 3–51.
  590. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  591. Study of the interplay of testamentary practices and statutes that conceded greater possibilities of the deceased controlling family property by testament.
  592. Find this resource:
  593. Piccialuti, Maura. L‘immortalità dei beni: Fedecommessi e primogeniture a Roma nei secoli xvii e xviii. Rome: Viella, 1999.
  594. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  595. The establishment of family trusts in Rome with papal legal approval and later legislation to limit such trusts.
  596. Find this resource:
  597. Tria, Luigi. Il fedecommesso nella legislazione e nella dottrina dal secolo xvi ai nostri giorni. Milan: Giuffrè, 1945.
  598. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  599. Argues for continuity in civil law and not just that Spanish influence brought primogeniture to Italy.
  600. Find this resource:
  601. Zorzoli, Maria Carla. “Della famiglia e del suo patrimonio: Riflessioni sull’uso del fedecommesso in Lombardia tra cinque e seicento.” In Marriage, Property, and Succession. Edited by Lloyd Bonfield, 155–213. Comparative Studies in Continental and Anglo-American Legal History, Vol. 10. Berlin: Duncker and Humblot, 1992.
  602. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  603. Study of wills and other devices establishing primogeniture over estates to preserve family patrimony.
  604. Find this resource:
  605. English Inheritance Law
  606.  
  607. Feudalism propelled the use of primogeniture as customary in inheritance in much of England. The problem was developing perpetual entails to preserve family property from the claims of creditors or the whims of heirs. The combination of the “fee tail male” and the “common recovery,” along with the strict settlement to married women, achieved much the same results that fideicommissum did on the Continent. Biancalana 2001 traces the complex developments that made entails possible, while Spring 1993 runs a parallel path with the inheritance of women. Bonfield 1983 follows legal developments solely relating to strict settlement, and Spring 1993 argues that he misunderstands the law of settlements, which, she says, effectively disinherited female heirs by grants to collateral males.
  608.  
  609. Biancalana, Joseph. The Fee Tail and the Common Recovery in Medieval England, 1176–1502. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
  610. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511495397Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  611. Discusses the development of inalienable entail in land as the basic element of family preservation and the parallel law of common recovery to bar entails.
  612. Find this resource:
  613. Bonfield, Lloyd. Marriage Settlements 1601–1740: The Adoption of the Strict Settlement. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
  614. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511897528Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  615. Studies legal conflicts over restraints on property alienation and the strict settlement given married daughters.
  616. Find this resource:
  617. Spring, Eileen. Law, Land, and Family: Aristocratic Inheritance in England, 1300 to 1800. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993.
  618. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  619. Follows the development and use of so-called strict settlement for aristocratic women, showing how long-standing inheritance rules were used and evaded.
  620. Find this resource:
  621. Gender in Law
  622.  
  623. Women faced a variety of limitations on their legal capacity throughout Europe. In ius commune one finds ideological gender notions in terms such as fragilitas, imbecillitas, and so forth. In England the main sources of female legal disability were the subsuming of the wife’s person into that of the husband, which was termed “coverture.” Kuehn 1991 has several chapters on the sources of legal disabilities falling on Florentine women especially. Kuehn 2001 shows how women’s capacities and activities changed across the life cycle. Kelleher 2010 on Aragon and Kermode and Walker 1994 on England look at cases in which women figured as plaintiffs or defendants, even against legal arguments downplaying their capacity to go to court or even to act as witnesses. Feci 2004 is a study of Roman women that relies not so much on court records as on contracts and other notarial instruments. Ingram 1987 is an analysis of English ecclesiastical courts that touches on other sorts of legal issues relating to marriage and women’s gossip networks, reminding us that women had access to information and ways of disseminating it not otherwise available to men. Koch 1991 looks at women on a normative level, in legislation and jurisprudence.
  624.  
  625. Feci, Simona. Pesci fuor d‘acqua: Donne a Roma in età moderna: Diritti e patrimoni. Rome: Viella, 2004.
  626. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  627. A study of women’s contracts, their agency in law, and their families and the legal officials who would restrict or protect that agency.
  628. Find this resource:
  629. Ingram, Martin. Church Courts, Sex and Marriage in England, 1570–1640. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
  630. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  631. Examines relative success of church courts in resolving marital disputes in an era of Puritan criticism of those same courts.
  632. Find this resource:
  633. Kelleher, Marie A. The Measure of Woman: Law and Female Identity in the Crown of Aragon. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010.
  634. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  635. Study of cases from the 13th and 14th centuries involving women. Property, crimes of passion, and violence against women.
  636. Find this resource:
  637. Kermode, Jenny, and Garthine Walker, eds. Women, Crime and the Courts in Early Modern England. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994.
  638. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  639. Essays on cases involving women in matters of gossip, slander, theft, and witchcraft.
  640. Find this resource:
  641. Koch, Elisabeth. Maior dignitas est in sexu virile: Das weibliche Geschlect im Normensystem des 16. Jahrhunderts. Ius Commune Sonderheft 57. Frankfurt: V. Klostermann, 1991.
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  643. Considers women in jurisprudence and in local statutes in Germany and elsewhere, seeing women’s legal lot as broadly the same everywhere.
  644. Find this resource:
  645. Kuehn, Thomas. Law, Family, and Women: Toward a Legal Anthropology of Renaissance Italy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.
  646. DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226457659.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  647. Considers dispute settlement and domestic law cases from Florentine sources. Convergence of common law with local laws and use of law by social actors.
  648. Find this resource:
  649. Kuehn, Thomas. “Daughters, Mothers, Wives, and Widows: Women as Legal Persons.” In Time, Space, and Women’s Lives in Early Modern Europe. Edited by Ann Jacobson Schutte, Thomas Kuehn, and Silvana Seidel Menchi, 97–116. Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2001.
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  651. Looks at differing capacities of legal agency for women by stages of life in relation to male relatives.
  652. Find this resource:
  653. Religious Reforms and Law
  654.  
  655. Martin Luther, himself a former law student, disparaged the role of law in his salvation theology; but the church he founded had to develop a law for itself, even as it adapted portions of the preexisting canon law. Witte 2002 follows that process. Berman 2003 makes a sweeping case, related to an earlier volume he wrote about the 11th-century Investiture Controversy and its effects on law: that Protestant law fed the growth of state-based law in early modern polities. Helmholz 1990 looks at a country that did less than others to change Catholic beliefs and practices, including church law and courts. Puritans pushed for greater change, but the canon law courts continued to rely on a largely medieval heritage while cut off from changes still coming from Rome. Kahn and Hutson 2001 assembles papers looking in detail at rhetoric in and around law and its capacity to construct new legal notions, or not. Stolleis 1990 looks at the legal control governments were able to gain over churches.
  656.  
  657. Berman, Harold J. Law and Revolution. Vol. 2: The Impact of the Protestant Reformations on the Western Legal Tradition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003.
  658. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  659. Concentrating on German and English law in the 16th and 17th centuries, the author argues that Protestantism transferred spiritual authority to secular legislators.
  660. Find this resource:
  661. Helmholz, R. H. Roman Canon Law in Reformation England. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
  662. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511522574Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  663. Follows adaptations of canon law in England to James I, arguing for its resilience in the face of institutional religious change.
  664. Find this resource:
  665. Kahn, Victoria, and Lorna Hutson, eds. Rhetoric and Law in Early Modern Europe. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001.
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  667. Papers from multidisciplinary perspectives, examining how contract language produced the modern subject or legal terms, constructed gender, for example.
  668. Find this resource:
  669. Stolleis, Michael. “‘Konfessionalisierung’ oder ‘Säkularisierung’ bei der Entstehung der frümodernen Staates.” Ius Commune 20 (1990): 1–23.
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  671. Discusses the role of law in extending government control over churches in the aftermath of the Reformation.
  672. Find this resource:
  673. Witte, John, Jr. Law and Protestantism: The Legal Teachings of the Lutheran Reformation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
  674. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511613548Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  675. Against Luther’s call for freedom from the church and disparaging of law, this follows the development of law that proved necessary, especially in regard to marriage and education.
  676. Find this resource:
  677. Reception of Roman Law in Germany
  678.  
  679. During the 15th century, a number of universities arose in Germany teaching canon and civil law in the fashion of Italian universities. Those trained in that law brought it into law courts and princes’ councils. Their social and economic influence was one reason Martin Luther’s father sent him to law school. The reception of the learned law was not limited to Germany, but that is where it has been discussed and studied the most. It was a reception of norms, terms, procedures, and entire habits of mind: This is the main thrust of Dahm 1972 and its accessible introduction to the topic. Wieacker 1996 follows the shifting norms of private law from customary law to Roman forms. Strauss 1986 argues that the process of state building was fostered by the reception of Roman law into the German Empire, over and beyond the reform of religion. Falk 2006 follows the influence of learned jurisprudence on courts and cases in Germany from the 16th to the 18th century. Mazzacane 1971 deals with one jurist, while Bender 1979 considers the supporters and the critics of the reception.
  680.  
  681. Bender, Peter. Die Rezeption der römischen Rechts im Urteil der deutschen Rechtswissenschaft. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1979.
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  683. Discussion of the arguments for and against the reception of Roman law in Germany and its effects on German law and society.
  684. Find this resource:
  685. Dahm, Georg. “On the Reception of Roman and Italian Law in Germany.” In Pre-reformation Germany. Edited by Gerald Strauss, 282–315. New York: Harper and Row, 1972.
  686. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  687. Argues that law in Germany was coming to be more professional even before the universities and their graduates were able to insert their law into legislation and courts.
  688. Find this resource:
  689. Falk, Ulrich. Consilia: Studien zur Praxis der Rechtsgutachten in der frühen Neuzeit. Rechsprechung Band 22. Frankfurt: V. Klostermann, 2006.
  690. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  691. Study of the interrelations between courts in Germany and consulting jurists associated with law faculties from the 16th through the 18th century.
  692. Find this resource:
  693. Mazzacane, Aldo. Scienza, logica e ideologia nella giurisprudenza tedesca del secolo xvi. Ius nostrum 16. Milan: Giuffrè, 1971.
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  695. Works out the themes in the book’s title through the intellectual biography of Johann Thomas Frey (b. 1543–d. 1583).
  696. Find this resource:
  697. Strauss, Gerald. Law, Resistance, and the State: The Opposition to Roman Law in Reformation Germany. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986.
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  699. Discusses canon and civil law prior to the Reformation and the consequent importance of civil law following religious upheaval.
  700. Find this resource:
  701. Wieacker, Franz. A History of Private Law in Europe, with Particular Reference to Germany. Translated by Tony Weir. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
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  703. Traces the rise of ius commune from Bologna and its reception in Germany, arguing that it was an intellectual and ethical improvement over earlier customary laws and courts. Translation of Privatsrechtgeschichte der Neuzeit unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der deutschen Entwicklung. 2d ed. (Göttingen, West Germany: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1967).
  704. Find this resource:
  705. Law and Government
  706.  
  707. Law is elaborated and administered through governmental bodies. Law also provides one body of theory about government, its role, and its relations to the governed. This is also where political philosophy and political science turn their attention. Dealing mainly with law, Quaglioni 1989 and Kirshner 1974 privilege the legal notions of citizenship. Mazzacane 1995 draws up a succinct treatment of the way jurists conceived of law working in Italian city-states. Kantorowicz 1957 is a still influential classic on what he saw as a process, in theology and law, that bestowed on states a corporate sacrality similar to that enjoyed by the Church as the mystical body of the faithful. Pennington 1993 follows juristic thought on the conflicts between rights and power. He finds the origins of legal due process, as the protection of subjects’ rights, not in England but in Continental legal thought.
  708.  
  709. Kantorowicz, Ernst H. The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957.
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  711. Uses artworks as well as law and theology to trace the ruler’s relationship to the divine, eternal ruler.
  712. Find this resource:
  713. Kirshner, Julius. “Ars Imitatur Naturam: A Consilium of Baldus on Naturalization in Florence.” Viator 5 (1974): 289–331.
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  715. A jurist’s interpretation of the extension of citizenship to a non-native of Florence and his resulting rights regarding fiscal obligations.
  716. Find this resource:
  717. Mazzacane, Aldo. “Law and Jurists in the Formation of the Modern State in Italy.” In The Origins of the State in Italy, 1300–1600. Edited by Julius Kirshner, 62–73. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.
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  719. Shows how opinions of leading jurists helped shape the state, especially the Venetian terraferma empire.
  720. Find this resource:
  721. Pennington, Kenneth. The Prince and the Law, 1200–1600: Sovereignty and Rights in the Western Legal Tradition. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
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  723. Examination of legal texts discussing the powers of the prince (princeps) and the rights of subjects, mainly on the Continent.
  724. Find this resource:
  725. Quaglioni, Diego. “Civilis sapientia”: Dottrine giuridiche e dottrine politiche fra medioevo ed età moderna, Saggi per la storia del pensiero giuridico moderno. San Marino, Italy: Maggioli, 1989.
  726. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  727. Essays on jurists’ thoughts relating to statutes, judges, citizenship, and usury.
  728. Find this resource:
  729. Particular States
  730.  
  731. Venice inherited Roman law indirectly from Byzantium, so her law was laced with civil law institutions; but the city also formally rejected ius commune as a source of law. However, Venice also conquered a land empire that not only included cities that were ruled by ius commune but included the prestigious law school in Padua. Venice becomes an interesting case, then, for the study of law in action, which Shaw 2006 does by means of a single low-level court, and Cozzi 1973 does by a survey of its different courts. Martines 1968 is a thorough study of the roles of jurists in the governance of Florence, where ius commune was applied, that also looks at their guild, their careers, relative wealth, and social backgrounds. Breen 2007 does much the same for a French city at a later period, where a distant central monarch was arrogating legal authority. Palmer 1993 traces the growth of English courts through the application of what might be termed emergency legislation after the plague of 1349. Doe 1990 is a broader study of authority in English law at a more theoretical level.
  732.  
  733. Breen, Michael P. Law, City, and King: Legal Culture, Municipal Politics, and State Formation in Early Modern Dijon. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2007.
  734. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  735. Role of lawyers in municipal offices against increasing royal control of governance and law.
  736. Find this resource:
  737. Cozzi, Gaetano. “Authority and the Law in Renaissance Venice.” In Renaissance Venice. Edited by J. R. Hale, 293–345. London: Faber and Faber, 1973.
  738. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  739. Traces the close identification of the Ventian patriciate with the law of the city and the bodies that enforced it.
  740. Find this resource:
  741. Doe, Norman. Fundamental Authority in Late Medieval English Law. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
  742. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  743. Contrasts moral views of law with those seeing law as positive expression of a sovereign will, which became more dominant over time.
  744. Find this resource:
  745. Martines, Lauro. Lawyers and Statecraft in Renaissance Florence. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968.
  746. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  747. Pioneering study of educated lawyers in the political affairs of an important city and as members of the ruling elite.
  748. Find this resource:
  749. Palmer, Robert C. English Law in the Age of the Black Death, 1348–1381: A Transformation of Governance and Law. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993.
  750. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  751. Argues that post-plague laws such as the Statute of Laborers were not unenforceable intrusions but led to extension of legal regulation.
  752. Find this resource:
  753. Shaw, James E. The Justice of Venice: Authorities and Liberties in the Urban Economy, 1550–1700. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
  754. DOI: 10.5871/bacad/9780197263778.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  755. Poses political visions of justice by Venice’s ruling class against the performance of a minor court, the Giustizia Vecchia.
  756. Find this resource
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