The book is an analysis of the cultural and social functions of law, legal processes and legal rituals in late medieval Northern France. It is centered around a time and a place in which European law underwent some major transformations, from a plethora of local oral customs to a fairly coherent system of national, written customary law. In this process, law and legal procedures came to reflect a great variety of cultural traditions, ranging from popular perceptions of animals and the human body to learned ideas of Roman jurisprudence. Drawing upon wide-ranging sources: judicial, legal, literary and historical, Cohen analyzes the various influences upon the shaping of law as a cultural manifestation and its application as an actual system of justice.
Author(s): Esther Cohen
Series: Brill's Studies in Intellectual History, 36
Publisher: E. J. Brill
Year: 1993
Language: English
Pages: 248
City: Leiden
Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations
Introduction
PART I: LAW
I. Functions and Forms of Law
II. The Reality of Medieval Law and Its Myths
The Multiplicity of Legal Systems: Mutual Influences and Conflicts
Posited Law: Reality and the Myth of the Good Old Law
Vox Populi : The Popular Components of Customary Law
III. The Reality of Late Medieval French Law and Its Myths
The Writing of Customary Law
The Myth of Customary Law
Figures and Myths of Justice
Northern French Law in the European Context
PART II: RITUALS
THE JUDICIAL CONTEXT
IV. Courthouse Rituals in Transition
THE CULTURAL CONTEXT
V. Folklore and Symbolic Functions in Medieval Legal Rituals
Popular Elements and Legal Rituals
Legal Rituals and Their Functions
Liminalization
Integration
VI. The Rituals of Exclusion: Women and Jews
Analogies of Liminality
Jews: The Human 'Animals'
Women: The Human Other
VII. The Rituals of Inclusion: Animals
The Animals
The Trials
The Secular Trials
The Ecclesiastical Trials
The Justice of the Animals
VIII. The Rituals of the Excluded: The Dead
THE CONTEXT OF AUTHORITY
IX. The Interactive Vocabulary of Justice
X. Power and Disgrace: Rituals of Infamy
Defamation by Marking
Defamation by Inversion
Nudity
Dehumanization: Spatial Inversion and Animalization
XI. Power and Death: Public Executions
Secular Power and Death
Ecclesiastical Power and Death
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
