Medieval Law: Theories and Practices

Level of study: Master

Law can surely be regarded as one of the staples of Medieval Civilisation in Europe. It permeated through virtually all aspects of social life in the Middle Ages – from one's relationships with the local lord or his sovereign (the king or the emperor) to one's personal transactions at a marketplace or relations with one's wife and children. Law regulated all that in various ways and through numerous sources, like local and general customs, enactments of the sovereigns, learned common law, court practice. In contrast to modern industrial societies, feudal Europe lacked nation-states and hierarchical legal orders. Medieval social world looked rather chaotic and linked via a plethora of acts, transactions, agreements, and conventions. Such medieval realities explain the twofold aim of this course, namely, to enrich the vision of the master students of the legal dimension of Latin (Western) Europe and its various sources of law, and to familiarise them with particularities of medieval legal practice. This aim is to be attained through several specific goals. Firstly, to introduce the main sources of medieval law to the master students (starting with the collections of secular laws and church canons in the Corpus Iuris Civilis and Corpus Iuris Canonici). Secondly, to present major legal doctrines (the learned law) developed by the leading medieval jurists (glossators, commentators, canonists, humanists, late scholastics) from the 12th through the 16th centuries (including the basic concepts, principles, rules, and institutions of legal theory). Thirdly, to look into the influence of the (academic) learned law upon the positive law and its implementation by the secular and clerical courts of various medieval and early modern sovereign entities (the Empire, the Church, kingdoms, city-states). These goals are to be achieved by lecturing. During seminar classes the master students will be taught to read and understand various fragments of the medieval sources of law and legal practice. They will be instructed as to how to read carefully, analyse, and translate medieval legal texts. A combination of the sources of the learned and positive law is suppose to familiarise the master students with the 'law in books' and 'law in action' and to enable them to perceive this law as the true foundation of the Western European Civilisation.

Syllabus:

 Medieval Law: Theories and Practices (PDF, 3,55 Мб)