Vernacular Law

Writing and the Reinvention of Customary Law in Medieval France

von Ada Maria Kuskowski

432 Seiten, Hardcover

Kurzbeschreibung des Verlags

Custom was fundamental to medieval legal practice. Whether in a property dispute or a trial for murder, the aggrieved and accused would go to lay court where cases were resolved according to custom. What custom meant, however, went through a radical shift in the medieval period. Between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, custom went from being a largely oral and performed practice to one that was also conceptualized in writing. Based on French lawbooks known as coutumiers, Ada Maria Kuskowski traces the repercussions this transformation - in the form of custom from unwritten to written and in the language of law from elite Latin to common vernacular - had on the cultural world of law. Vernacular Law offers a new understanding of the formation of a new field of knowledge: authors combined ideas, experience and critical thought to write lawbooks that made disparate customs into the field known as customary law.

• Reihe: Studies in Legal History
• Themen: Geschichte und Archäologie Geschichte Europäische Geschichte
• ISBN: 9781009217897
• Sprache: Englisch
• Erscheinungsdatum: 03.11.2022
• Größe: 230 x 163 mm
• Verlag: Cambridge University Press