Tuesdays & Thursdays 3:30-4:45
HIS 510 – Medieval Law
An Adventure in the “deep history” of modern western legal thought!
This course explores the variety of legal systems operating in medieval Europe, and connects those legal systems to changing social, religious, cultural, and political contexts. We consider the impact of the dissolution of the western Roman empire on the development of law, and study the survival of Roman forms of legal analysis after the fourth century. We examine the law codes known as “barbarian” law; we also look at other emerging forms of secular law, from the municipal to the royal, with particular attention to the Continental “ius commune” and the English Common Law. We study the formation of religious legislation, and consider the debates over the relative authority of different sources of legislation, such as Scripture, councils, popes, theologians, and academic jurists. To see how the medieval legal environment was actually experienced, we read accounts of trials and other legal processes. The course shows the extent to which modern legal thought is deeply indebted, in surprising ways, to the principles and constructs of a thousand years of legal experimentation and formation of long-standing traditions.
