Canon Law I: Legal change and Legal learning: the Medieval Nordic Laws and the rest of Europe

Canon Law II: ‘All Sorts and Conditions’: Death, Servitude and Affinity in Medieval Europe

Canon Law III: Authority and the Canons in the Twelfth century

Canon Law I: Legal change and Legal learning: the Medieval Nordic Laws and the rest of Europe

Organizer:        Frederik Pedersen, School of Divinity, History and Philosophy, University of Aberdeen  

Moderator:      Frederik Pedersen

Sponsor: Church, Law and Society in the Middle Ages (CLASMA) Research Network.

The Medieval Nordic Laws Project (MNL): An Introduction 

 Lisa Collinson (MNL/University of Aberdeen)

The Medieval Nordic Laws Project (MNL) is a three-year international, interdisciplinary network-project, which began in autumn 2009 and will continue until autumn 2012, funded by the Leverhulme Trust and The Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities (Stockholm). The project is headed by Stefan Brink, and coordinated by Lisa Collinson (both University of Aberdeen), and involves a large team of researchers and reference-group experts from Britain, Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Germany. The aim of the project is to produce new English-language translations of, and commentaries upon, all of the medieval Nordic provincial laws, which will be published in a series of approximately fifteen volumes. (Further material is likely to be published online.) This is the first occasion on which scholars from all the Nordic countries have worked together (along with other experts) to provide consistent and reliable translations of the full range of original texts. The project will make this important corpus of laws available to an international audience, and promises to shed new light on the legal history of the Nordic countries. (The Danish law-codes, for example, are being re-examined afresh for the first time in a generation.) This paper will introduce the project, report on current progress, and suggest future research directions.

‘Unless it is openly against God’: Canon law and legal change in Denmark, c.1170-1250 

Michael Gelting (MNL; Danish National Archives; University of Aberdeen)

During recent years, the focus of research on the medieval Danish law-books has changed significantly. Influences from canon law and the ius commune are increasingly being recognized as important factors in the development of medieval Danish law, whereas previous research tended to focus on autochtonous developments as the prime motor of legal change. Taking my point of departure in the prologue to the Law of Jutland from 1241, I wish to discuss the dynamics of legal change in Denmark in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as being largely determined and conditioned by developments within canon law. 

The Power of the Law: Danish Law Manuscripts and the Legal Culture´s Understanding of the Power of the Book

  Per Andersen (MNL: Aarhus University, Denmark)

Some of the most comprehensive historical sources from Medieval Denmark are the corpuses of laws for the different provinces of the realm written down in the period between c. 1170 and the late 1240s. For more than a century the Danish vernacular law texts have been interpreted by legal historians as reflecting the “good old law,” i.e. the legal historians have thought the provincial laws to be preserving a special Danish way of organizing a legal system and special Danish rules, reflecting a script culture characterized by passive transcription. No doubt this interpretation was influenced by nationalism and romanticism and therefore there has been a paucity studies comparing Medieval Denmark and the rest of Europe. Over the last decade this situation has changed: A number of comparative studies have shown that Danish law of the 12th and the 13th centuries was transformed and shaped by ‘foreign’ ideologies and legal doctrines from Canon law and contemporary learned law as taught at universities in Italy and France. In the same period law texts such as Gratian´s Decretum (1139-1159), Frederick II´s Liber Augustalis/Constitutions of Melfi (1231) and the Aragonese Fueros de Aragón (1247) have showed that Danish laws were constantly augmented by new rules and new chapters and that the structure was edited several times during the century following their promulgation. In the paper I will discuss the implications of these findings and their consequences for the traditional conception of the provincial laws as reflecting a written culture characterized by passive transcription. Inspired by international studies of legal manuscripts I will show that the Danish provincial laws underwent a deliberate editing already in the 13th century. The paper will thus connect to a larger issue concerning legal culture and the legal culture’s ability, readiness and willingness to transform the law – and the legal culture´s understanding of the power of the book.

Canon Law II: ‘All Sorts and Conditions’: Death, Servitude and Affinity in Medieval Europe

Organizer:        Kathleen G. Cushing, Department of History, Keele University

Moderator:      Kathleen G. Cushing

Sponsor: Church, Law and Society in the Middle Ages (CLASMA) Research Network.

Ecclesiastical Dominium over Agricultural Workers in Carolingian Europe

Mary Sommar, Department of History, Millersville University

Abstract:

Of growing interest among historians of the Middle Ages is the question of the economic importance of slavery in the Carolingian era presented in the McCormick thesis. Until recently, however, there has been relatively little attention paid to the situation of situation of servi (and ancillae) who were under ecclesiastical control, as opposed to those whose lords were counted among the laity. This paper is an examination of the relevant canon (and secular) law, of demographic data concerning free and unfree peasant populations, and of cartulary and epistolary evidence from the eighth and ninth centuries to discover more about the nature of the relationships between ecclesiastical institutions and personnel and their unfree dependants.

Death in the Acta: Disputes over Bodies and Burials in Twelfth-century England 

Bruce C. Brasington, Department of History and Geography, West Texas A & M University

Abstract:

The English episcopal acta are a remarkable, and rather underexploited, source for twelfth-century legal, social, and cultural history. This paper will explore how the acta treated disputes between religious foundations and the secular church over sepulturae—burial rights. While there has been some attention paid to these, I intend to provide a more comprehensive examination, with particular attention to how these disputes reveal conflicting ties of patronage between noble families and religious houses. I also wish to explore a singular case from Hereford where, between 1150-1154, bishop Gilbert Foliot was informed that Walter del Mans and his wife Agnes had granted to Leominster priory the virgate and meadow at Priddleton in Humber; Gilbert consented to consecrate a cemetery at their chapel of Humber, provided that only one body was buried there, the rest being buried at Leominster as before.

Spiritual Kinship and Naming in late-medieval Europe’

Christof Rolker, University of Konstanz

Abstract:

Spiritual kinship is a prime example of a canon law concept that has both puzzled scholars (medieval and modern alike) and also has important social consequences in the society at large. Yet, while a substantial body of medieval scholarship informs us in great detail about the doctrine of affinitas spiritualis, the social implications of godparenthood in the later Middle Ages are but dimly known. Did godparents serve as surrogate parents, educating their godchildren, providing for their spiritual and, where necessary, also their material welfare? Or was sponsorship at baptism a largely social ritual, creating a relationship lasting not much longer than the festivities following baptismal service? This paper will bring together conflicting evidence from very different sources, looking specifically at the function of the most common gift godparents bestowed at baptism, that is, given names. 

Canon Law III: Authority and the Canons in the Twelfth century

Organizer:        Kathleen G. Cushing, Department of History, Keele University

Moderator:      Kathleen G. Cushing

Sponsor: Church, Law and Society in the Middle Ages (CLASMA) Research Network.

John of Salisbury: Canon Law in Context

Maxine Esser, University of St Andrews

Abstract:

This paper shall address the subject of John of Salisbury and the use of canon law within his writing.  Does John place the sources of law which he uses in any hierarchical order?  If so, what is the importance of canon law, and does he use Gratian XX as a model?  I shall discuss whether there is a tendency to favour certain aspects of canon law, for example the words of St Augustine.  Essentially, the paper aims to put John’s use of canon law into the context of his works, and into the context of the period in which he was writing.

Transforming Theology into Jurisprudence 

John Wei, Department of History, Grinnell College

Abstract:

This paper will investigate one of the ways in which twelfth-century canonists went about transforming theology into jurisprudence. In question 3 of Causa 33 of his Decretum (c. 1140), Gratian includes a long tract on penitential theology, the tract De penitentia. Gratian's commentators, the decretists, generally give this section of Gratian's work only cursory attention, if they deign to gloss it at all. Many of these same commentators, however, refer to canons and dicta contained in the De penitentia when elucidating other sections of the Decretum. The goal of this paper is to understand what these decretists found valuable about the De penitentia and how they believed it contributed to understanding canon law.

Local use of the Third Lateran Canons, ca. 1179-ca.1215

Danica Summerlin, Queens' College, University of Cambridge

Abstract:

Conciliar canons are the closest approximation to legislation from the twelfth century. Nevertheless, it is often forgotten that they were subject to similar forces to decretal letters in their dissemination; their transmission was the result of their inclusion by local canonists and their immediate import a consequence of their use and re-promulgation by local ecclesiastics. This paper will investigate the implementation of the 1179 Lateran decrees and their observation by local ecclesiastics. It will illuminate their effect on law at a local level, demonstrating how far they penetrated into local consciousness and indicating which decrees were appreciated or overlooked.