Law and Theology in Twelfth-century England

Law and Theology in Twelfth-century England PDF Author: Jason Taliadoros
Publisher: Brepols Publishers
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
This book explores the legal and theological thought of Master Vacarius (c.1115/20 - c.1200), the renowned twelfth-century jurist. It focuses on this Italian master's four works, composed in the second half of the twelfth century, which deal with the resolution of conflict in law and theology. Vacarius is a paradox for scholars. They have found it difficult to reconcile his role as a legal teacher, notably through his textbook the Liber pauperum ('Book of the Poor'), which established a school of Roman law at Oxford, with his 'extra-legal' works on marriage, Christology and heretical theology. This study accounts for this paradox by exploring these three extra-legal treatises, composed in the 1160s and 1170s, in light of Vacarius' legal textbook. The author argues that Vacarius applies the legal method of the ius commune (European common law) to theological and sacramental debates. In this way, Vacarius represents a trend in medieval intellectual history, particular to the twelfth-century renaissance, which has been little appreciated to date - the hermeneutic of the 'lawyer-theologian'.

Law and Theology in Twelfth-century England

Law and Theology in Twelfth-century England PDF Author: Jason Taliadoros
Publisher: Brepols Publishers
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
This book explores the legal and theological thought of Master Vacarius (c.1115/20 - c.1200), the renowned twelfth-century jurist. It focuses on this Italian master's four works, composed in the second half of the twelfth century, which deal with the resolution of conflict in law and theology. Vacarius is a paradox for scholars. They have found it difficult to reconcile his role as a legal teacher, notably through his textbook the Liber pauperum ('Book of the Poor'), which established a school of Roman law at Oxford, with his 'extra-legal' works on marriage, Christology and heretical theology. This study accounts for this paradox by exploring these three extra-legal treatises, composed in the 1160s and 1170s, in light of Vacarius' legal textbook. The author argues that Vacarius applies the legal method of the ius commune (European common law) to theological and sacramental debates. In this way, Vacarius represents a trend in medieval intellectual history, particular to the twelfth-century renaissance, which has been little appreciated to date - the hermeneutic of the 'lawyer-theologian'.

Justice and mercy

Justice and mercy PDF Author: Philippa Byrne
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526125366
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
This book examines one of the most fundamental issues in twelfth-century English politics: justice. It demonstrates that during the foundational period for the common law, the question of judgement and judicial ethics was a topic of heated debate – a common problem with multiple different answers. How to be a judge, and how to judge well, was a concern shared by humble and high, keeping both kings and parish priests awake at night. Using theological texts, sermons, legal treatises and letter collections, the book explores how moralists attempted to provide guidance for uncertain judges. It argues that mercy was always the most difficult challenge for a judge, fitting uncomfortably within the law and of disputed value. Shining a new light on English legal history, Justice and mercy reveals the moral dilemmas created by the establishment of the common law.

Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century

Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century PDF Author: Patrick Wormald
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
ISBN: 9780631134961
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 528

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Book Description
This volume, the first of two comprising The Making of English Law, provides the first full-length account of the Old English law-codes for over eighty years, and the first that has ever been published in the English language. It is designed to be both an authoritative work of reference for scholars seeking enlightenment on particular legal manuscripts or texts and a coherent account of how the corpus of Old English law from the seventh to the twelfth century came to subsist and survive. Part I opens with an account of the historians of early English law, including the immortal F. W. Maitland (1850-1906) and Felix Liebermann, author of the definitive edition of the law codes (1898-1916). It then provides the most detailed examination English of law and legislation on the European continent in the post-Roman era and of the earliest Anglo-Saxon legislators in the seventh century. This sets the scene for the law making of King Alfred and his successors. As well as providing an authoritative account of Anglo-Saxon legislation this much-anticipated book opens new perspectives on the emergence of the English State. It will be welcomed as a landmark in the study of English law and government, and as an exploration of the problem of authority in a pre-modern society.

Clerical Continence in Twelfth-Century England and Byzantium

Clerical Continence in Twelfth-Century England and Byzantium PDF Author: Maroula Perisanidi
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351024604
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
Why did the medieval West condemn clerical marriage as an abomination while the Byzantine Church affirmed its sanctifying nature? This book brings together ecclesiastical, legal, social, and cultural history in order to examine how Byzantine and Western medieval ecclesiastics made sense of their different rules of clerical continence. Western ecclesiastics condemned clerical marriage for three key reasons: married clerics could alienate ecclesiastical property for the sake of their families; they could secure careers in the Church for their sons, restricting ecclesiastical positions and lands to specific families; and they could pollute the sacred by officiating after having had sex with their wives. A comparative study shows that these offending risk factors were absent in twelfth-century Byzantium: clerics below the episcopate did not have enough access to ecclesiastical resources to put the Church at financial risk; clerical dynasties were understood within a wider frame of valued friendship networks; and sex within clerical marriage was never called impure in canon law, as there was little drive to use pollution discourses to separate clergy and laity. These facts are symptomatic of a much wider difference between West and East, impinging on ideas about social order, moral authority, and reform.

Marriage, Family, and Law in Medieval Europe

Marriage, Family, and Law in Medieval Europe PDF Author: Michael M. Sheehan
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 9780802081377
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
A collection of essays by Michael Sheehan, whose work and interpretation on medieval property, marriage, family, sexuality, and law has insprired scholars for 40 years.

Priests of the Law

Priests of the Law PDF Author: Thomas J. McSweeney
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192584189
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Priests of the Law tells the story of the first people in the history of the common law to think of themselves as legal professionals. In the middle decades of the thirteenth century, a group of justices working in the English royal courts spent a great deal of time thinking and writing about what it meant to be a person who worked in the law courts. This book examines the justices who wrote the treatise known as Bracton. Written and re-written between the 1220s and the 1260s, Bracton is considered one of the great treatises of the early common law and is still occasionally cited by judges and lawyers when they want to make the case that a particular rule goes back to the beginning of the common law. This book looks to Bracton less for what it can tell us about the law of the thirteenth century, however, than for what it can tell us about the judges who wrote it. The judges who wrote Bracton - Martin of Pattishall, William of Raleigh, and Henry of Bratton - were some of the first people to work full-time in England's royal courts, at a time when there was no recourse to an obvious model for the legal professional. They found one in an unexpected place: they sought to clothe themselves in the authority and prestige of the scholarly Roman-law tradition that was sweeping across Europe in the thirteenth century, modelling themselves on the jurists of Roman law who were teaching in European universities. In Bracton and other texts they produced, the justices of the royal courts worked hard to ensure that the nascent common-law tradition grew from Roman Law. Through their writing, this small group of people, working in the courts of an island realm, imagined themselves to be part of a broader European legal culture. They made the case that they were not merely servants of the king: they were priests of the law.

The Oxford History of the Laws of England Volume II

The Oxford History of the Laws of England Volume II PDF Author: John Hudson
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191630039
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 981

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Book Description
This volume in the landmark Oxford History of the Laws of England series, spans three centuries that encompassed the tumultuous years of the Norman conquest, and during which the common law as we know it today began to emerge. The first full-length treatment of all aspects of the early development of the English common law in a century, featuring extensive research into the original sources that bring the era to life, and providing an interpretative account, a detailed subject analysis, and fascinating glimpses into medieval disputes. Starting with King Alfred (871-899), this book examines the particular contributions of the Anglo-Saxon period to the development of English law, including the development of a powerful machinery of royal government, significant aspects of a long-lasting court structure, and important elements of law relating to theft and violence. Until the reign of King Stephen (1135-54), these Anglo-Saxon contributions were maintained by the Norman rulers, whilst the Conquest of 1066 led to the development of key aspects of landholding that were to have a continuing effect on the emerging common law. The Angevin period saw the establishment of more routine royal administration of justice, closer links between central government and individuals in the localities, and growing bureaucratization. Finally, the later twelfth and earlier thirteenth century saw influential changes in legal expertise. The book concludes with the rebellion against King John in 1215 and the production of the Magna Carta. Laying out in exhaustive detail the origins of the English common law through the ninth to the early thirteenth centuries, this book will be essential reading for all legal historians and a vital work of reference for academics, students, and practitioners.

Magic and Religion in Medieval England

Magic and Religion in Medieval England PDF Author: Catherine Rider
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1780230745
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
During the Middle Ages, many occult rituals and beliefs existed and were practiced alongside those officially sanctioned by the church. While educated clergy condemned some of these as magic, many of these practices involved religious language, rituals, or objects. For instance, charms recited to cure illnesses invoked God and the saints, and love spells used consecrated substances such as the Eucharist. Magic and Religion in Medieval England explores the entanglement of magical practices and the clergy during the Middle Ages, uncovering how churchmen decided which of these practices to deem acceptable and examining the ways they persuaded others to adopt their views. Covering the period from 1215 to the Reformation, Catherine Rider traces the change in the church’s attitude to vernacular forms of magic. She shows how this period brought the clergy more closely into contact with unofficial religious practices than ever before, and how this proximity prompted them to draw up precise guidelines on distinguishing magic from legitimate religion. Revealing the necessity of improving clerical education and the pastoral care of the laity, Magic and Religion in Medieval England provides a fascinating picture of religious life during this period.

Power and Justice in Medieval England

Power and Justice in Medieval England PDF Author: Joshua C. Tate
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300163835
Category : Advowson
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
How the medieval right to appoint a parson helped give birth to English common law Appointing a parson to the local church following a vacancy--an "advowson"--was one of the most important rights in medieval England. The king, the monasteries, and local landowners all wanted to control advowsons because they meant political, social, and economic influence. The question of law turned on who had the superior legal claim to the vacancy--which was a type of property--at the time the position needed to be filled. In tracing how these conflicts were resolved, Joshua C. Tate takes a sharply different view from that of historians who focus only on questions of land ownership, and he shows that the English needed new legal contours to address the questions of ownership and possession that arose from these disputes. Tate argues that the innovations made necessary by advowson law helped give birth to modern common law and common law courts.

Law | Book | Culture in the Middle Ages

Law | Book | Culture in the Middle Ages PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004448659
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 477

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Book Description
Law | Book | Culture in the Middle Ages takes a detailed view on the role of manuscripts and the written word in legal cultures, spanning the medieval period across western and central Europe.