IMC 2020: Sessions

Session 1130: Articulating Legal and Political Boundaries, 1050-1350, II: Negotiating Legal Traditions

Wednesday 8 July 2020, 11.15-12.45

Sponsor:	AHRC Project 'The Community of the Realm in Scotland, 1249-1424' / BA Network 'Jurisdiction, Legal Community & Political Discourse, 1050-1250'
Organisers:	Danica Summerlin, Department of History, University of Sheffield Alice Taylor, Department of History, King's College London
Moderator/Chair:	Alice Taylor, Department of History, King's College London
Paper 1130-a	Legal Exchange and Jurisdictional Flexibility in Norman Sicily (Language: English) Philippa Byrne, St John's College, University of Oxford Index terms: Law, Political Thought, Politics and Diplomacy
Paper 1130-b	Legal Compilations and Legal Writing in Post-Becket England (Language: English) Sarah White, St Andrews Institute of Mediaeval Studies, University of St Andrews Index terms: Canon Law, Law, Manuscripts and Palaeography, Political Thought
Paper 1130-c	From Auctoritas to Señorío and Imperium to Imperio: The Vernacularisation of Roman Law and the Romanisation of the Legal Vernacular at the Court of Alfonso X of Castilla y León, 1252-1284 (Language: English) Paul Murphy, School of History & Heritage University of Lincoln Index terms: Language and Literature - Spanish or Portuguese, Law, Political Thought
Abstract	This is the second session in a strand which aims to problematise the 'Grand Narrative' of legal development in the central Middle Ages in Europe. Traditional narratives have stressed either the growth of papal and imperial claims to pan-European legal supremacy or, the converse, how the developing polities created their own 'national laws'. This strand examines how legal communities were defined against one another (and for what purposes) and how litigants, lawyers, and politicians used and negotiated competing legal traditions to (in part) problematise the relationship between law and the nation. The second session addresses explicitly the circumstances and contexts in which law-makers and compilers of legal manuscripts adopted and took on elements of 'other' legal traditions. The papers range from Sicily to Castile-Leon to a 12th-century law-book originating from England.