IMC 2015: Sessions

20 years after the publication of Susan Reynolds's ground-breaking study Fiefs and Vassals, her deconstruction of feudalism as a basic normative order of Medieval Europe is commonly accepted. Nonetheless, since her alternative suggestions did not equally succeed, many central aspects of Medieval European societies at the moment remain somewhat amorphous. In the second of our two sessions on Medieval normative orders beyond feudalism, we are asking how the codifications of customary law from the 12th century onwards affected practices of property. Which role did the earliest collections of feudal regulations from Northern Italy play within the process we are used to call the 'Formation of Feudalism'? Can we trace the impact of these texts in practices of property as documented by charter evidence? And how did the codification of vernacular law books during the 13th century affected these practices?