Published by Akademie Verlag

Volume 25 Issue 1

Issue of Das Mittelalter

Contents
Journal Overview

Frontmatter

Publicly Available June 19, 2020

Imaginationen und Praktiken des Rechts: Literatur- und geschichtswissenschaftliche Perspektiven

June 19, 2020

Einleitung

Roland Scheel, Silke Schwandt

Page range: 1-9

June 19, 2020

Erzählen als Praxis des Rechts

June 19, 2020

Hagiographie und Recht. Narrativierung von Recht und Verrechtlichung des Narrativs in der Vita des Gregor von Agrigent

Philipp Winterhager

Page range: 12-29

Abstract

This article examines three episodes from the Life of Gregory of Agrigento, drafted in Greek in the 9 th century, in which juridical material and procedure inform the hagiographical narrative, and vice versa. It argues that both spheres depend on, and contribute to, a common ‘nomos’, an idea of the righteous, lawful and cooperative coexistence of imperial and papal power in the church of Sicily. While this coexistence is anachronistic in the hagiographer’s own times, he constructs it through the narrativization of law and the juridification of narrative.

June 19, 2020

Ein rechtsfreier Raum? Die legale Situation auf den Färöern im Spiegel der ‚Færeyinga saga‘

Andreas Schmidt

Page range: 30-45

Abstract

The chapter argues for a more nuanced and empirically based understanding of the discourse on law and socio-cultural norms in Old Icelandic literature on the grounds of a narratological reading of ‘Færeyinga saga’ as a case study. It has often been claimed that Icelandic sources express an ideal of freedom based on communality as guaranteed by the law. By contrast, ‘Færeyinga saga’ represents a cynical discourse on power politics that renders law as an invariable concept obsolete and works solely on the principle that ‘might is right’. This cynicism, however, is presented in a form that leaves the narrative open to interpretation, showing that regardless of its possible dating, narrative literature can serve as a starting point for social discussion. Consequently, the discourse on law in medieval Iceland must be perceived as more polyphonic than has been allowed for by previous unifying readings in scholarship.

June 19, 2020

Erzähltes Recht oder Erzählen vom Recht? Praxis, Theorie und Gender in isländischen Sagatexten

Roland Scheel

Page range: 46-65

Abstract

The society depicted in the Icelandic family sagas has often been characterised as the archetype of a ‘feuding society’. The disputing strategies found in the sagas have therefore served as an argument that the prescriptions of the laws which curb revenge were irrelevant in socio-legal practice. This dominance of the feud as the actual ‘law’ crystallising in saga disputes is questioned through a close analysis of gender roles. While ‘classical’ sagas frequently apply the motif of the female whetter who forces a male character to take action or lose his manly honour, thus stabilising the feuding mechanism, the contemporary sagas and non-canonical family sagas display a wide variety of male-female interaction in the negotiation of social resources and legal obligations. The systematic look at non-canonical passages reveals a discourse of counsel, in which gender roles are fluid and interchangeable. This fluidity reveals an implicit theory of ‘law’ in the sense of doing conflict which stresses the stabilising forces supporting written law opposed to the motif of the whetter, which comes to form a central element of the imagination of the Icelandic heroic age.

June 19, 2020

Die ‚patria potestas‘ in Boccaccios ‚Decameron‘

Pia Claudia Doering

Page range: 66-82

Abstract

The power of fathers over their children – especially over their daughters – is a central theme of Boccaccio’s ‘Decameron’. Novella V,7 situates the ‘patria potestas’ in a tension-filled position between honour and law, vigilante justice and public prosecution. The legitimation of cruelty and violence by invoking the ‘patria potestas’ is questioned through the confrontation with poetic justice.

Soziale Praktiken

June 19, 2020

Rechtspraxis als soziale Praxis. Das Beispiel der Huntingdonshire Eyre von 1286

Silke Schwandt

Page range: 83-102

Abstract

This article examines the practice of law as a social practice. Especially at a time when there were only a few professional courts, the interaction at court also has a social component. Courts come together and are formed by actors for whom the judicial service was only one of many (often vassal) tasks. This means: at the moment of the court, at the moment of the trial, a group is formed for a certain purpose. It will be observed how these groups form, how they are composed, and how the decisions of the actors for a particular jurisdiction influence these processes. A case in point will be the so-called Justices in Eyre and their session in Huntingdon in 1286, representing a royal court journeying into the localities to challenge local courts and to provide royal justice for the population.

June 19, 2020

Gelehrtes Recht oder gelebte Praxis? Kaufleute und ihre Vertreter im späten Mittelalter

Ulla Kypta

Page range: 103-118

Abstract

Merchants in late medieval Antwerp worked with a number of different representatives: They appointed proxies to trade on their behalf, to collect debts in their name or to represent them in court. If a merchant wanted to authorize another person to act on his behalf, he went to a notary who issued a letter of procuration. The article discusses the role of Roman law in these procurations. It contrasts the procurations issued by the notaries with other models for procurations found in a form book for notaries in Antwerp. The analysis comes to the conclusion that the basic idea of installing a proxy did not rely on Roman law. However, knowledge of Roman law was crucial if someone wanted to be represented in a Roman law court. Furthermore, concepts derived from Roman law were applied when complicated problems or phenomena had to be shortened to a few words. In sum, the practice of including phrases and concepts of Roman law wherever they proved useful can be regarded as a part of the lex mercatoria , the customary law of merchants.

June 19, 2020

Fremde gegen Bürger. Zivilgerichtspraxis am Beispiel des Duisburger Notgerichts im 16. Jahrhundert

Andrea Bendlage

Page range: 119-134

Abstract

Since the Middle Ages, hospitable courts played a central role in the complex judicial landscape of the pre-modern age for the conflict resolution of parties of different regional origins, because civil disputes could be dealt with more quickly if at least one plaintiff or defendant was a (legal) stranger. With the obvious relationship between (social) belonging and law established by these courts, questions of asymmetries in law come to the fore, which under the common keywords of inequality, integration and exclusion are a leading interest of research in the history of law, culture and crime, but which have so far hardly been dealt with in research within the framework of civil court practice. The Duisburg Hospitable Court shows that the historical civil proceedings concerning non-repaid loans, undelivered goods or disputed estates were no less important for social stability and order in the pre-modern period than criminal proceedings, even though social integration and exclusion were not the core issues of a civil lawsuit. Since the Middle Ages, hospitable courts concerned themselves with communication and trade practices and at the same time constituted an institution that offered legal security for both foreigners and locals. This was still true in the early modern period, which generally stands for a time that became increasingly hardened towards strangers and people on the move.

June 19, 2020

unrechtliche peinliche schmehung oder dem gemeinen nutz nuetzlich?Eine Fallstudie zur Normenkonkurrenz im Schmähschriftprozess des 16. Jahrhunderts

Jan Siegemund

Page range: 135-149

Abstract

Libel played an important and extraordinary role in early modern conflict culture. The article discusses their functions and the way they were assessed in court. The case study illustrates argumentative spaces and different levels of normative references in libel trials in 16 th century electoral Saxony. In 1569, Andreas Langener – in consequence of a long stagnating private conflict – posted several libels against the nobleman Tham Pflugk in different public places in the city of Dresden. Consequently, he was arrested and charged with ‘libelling’. Depending on the reference to conflicting social and legal norms, he had therefore been either threatened with corporal punishment including his execution, or rewarded with laudations. In this case, the act of libelling could be seen as slander, but also as a service to the community, which Langener had informed about potentially harmful transgression of norms. While the common good was the highest maxim, different and sometimes conflicting legally protected interests had to be discussed. The situational decision depended on whether the articulated charges where true and relevant for the public, on the invective language, and especially on the quality and size of the public sphere reached by the libel.

Der Rechtstext als Ort der Praxis

June 19, 2020

Zur Frage der Beziehung zwischen Recht und Trinken

Daniela Fruscione

Page range: 150-164

Abstract

Three Kentish laws (Æthelberht 9, Hloþære and Eadric 8 and 9) written in the 7th century mention the places where the men drink ( þær mæn drincen ).It has already been observed that drinking is not only a feature of a male warrior society, but represents a quasi-juridical institution which enjoys special protection (Renato Gendre 1992). However, the offences committed during these gatherings and the high fines duly paid can only partly be attributed to a general violation of the king’s and house protection.Behind these laws there is an echo of more specific rituals. The legal character in drinking together, as it emerges in the symbolic offences described and fined in Hloþære and Eadric 8 and 9, has never been explored in the light of the recent works on ritual. The meaning of drinking (and toasting) as a binding moment inside some legal proceedings as well as its specific relation to consent are subject of the following investigation. As the most recent works on ritual show, the binding aspect and the creation of consent are among the major features of ritual. Only inside this discourse can thus be explained the meaning in the act of taking a cup from another where men are drinking (with no fault of the man from whom the cup was taken) and of drawing a weapon without doing any harm. These are two actions in which a boasting character is only an aspect, a superficial feature of a warrior society. The deep legal symbolism of both acts deserves further exploration, in which they prevent the participation of the concerned in a legal ceremony and disturb the building of the consensus.

June 19, 2020

„Indo-European in Basis and Origin“. Das altirische Recht zwischen insularem Archaismus und europäischer Verflechtung

Marcel Bubert

Page range: 165-179

Abstract

Research on Old Irish law was from the very beginning related to specific epistemological and political contexts in which Celtic and Indo-European Studies emerged as scientific disciplines at the end of the 19 th century. The premise of historical linguistics that the Indo-European languages derived from a common ‘origin’ had far reaching implications for studies on medieval Celtic law tracts. Since linguists had discovered significant parallels between Old Irish and Sanskrit, the legal traditions of Ireland and India were believed to preserve archaic Indo-European continuities as well. Against this background, and in a particular political context, Irish scholars of the 20 th century argued for the autonomy and isolation of Old Irish law which was supposed to be unaffected by the Latin and Christian literature of continental Europe. However, later researches departed radically from this national perspective and emphasized the impact of Canon law, hagiography and the Bible on Irish written culture. This article takes up a different perspective by focusing on the persistence of a legal imagery that was by no means essentially Indo-European but still provided conceptual tools for the interpretation and ‘translation’ of texts, as they occur in vernacular adaptations of Latin literature.

June 19, 2020

Marginalia in Medieval Western Scandinavian Law Manuscripts

Stefan Drechsler

Page range: 180-195

Abstract

In the present chapter, the design of select margins of late medieval Old Norse manuscripts containing the Icelandic ‘Jónsbók’, ‘Kristinréttr Árna biskups’ and Norwegian ‘Landslǫg’ law codes is addressed. In particular, it discusses the size and fillings of margins in these codices and the relation to their modes of use by original clients and later owners. Although it is well-known that Scandinavian law manuscripts contain a large number of notes written by both original and later users, the particular use of marginal spaces by original scribes and illuminators for glosses and other annotations and illuminations has scarcely been investigated to date. In my contribution, two distinctive features will be addressed: (1.) The different use of margins by Norwegian and Icelandic readers of the manuscripts, and (2.) the use of margins by illuminators surrounding the column(s) and incorporated initials.

Kommentare

June 19, 2020

Mittelalterliche Konfliktregelung von den Rändern her denken. Ein kurzer Kommentar

Franz-Josef Arlinghaus

Page range: 196-200

June 19, 2020

Kommentar: Vielfalt – rechtshistorische Signatur mittelalterlichen Rechts

Andreas Thier

Page range: 201-204

Rezensionen

June 19, 2020

Rezensionen

Page range: 205-246

About this journal

This journal, published by the Mediävistenverband since 1996, provides a forum for interdisciplinary Medieval Studies. Each issue covers a different topic from several different perspectives. The journal presents recent discussions and new books published in various disciplines and explores their importance to Medieval Studies in general.

Volume 25 Issue 1

Issue of Das Mittelalter

Frontmatter

Einleitung

Auswahlbibliographie

Hagiographie und Recht. Narrativierung von Recht und Verrechtlichung des Narrativs in der Vita des Gregor von Agrigent

Abstract

Ein rechtsfreier Raum? Die legale Situation auf den Färöern im Spiegel der ‚Færeyinga saga‘

Abstract

Erzähltes Recht oder Erzählen vom Recht? Praxis, Theorie und Gender in isländischen Sagatexten

Abstract

Die ‚patria potestas‘ in Boccaccios ‚Decameron‘

Abstract

Rechtspraxis als soziale Praxis. Das Beispiel der Huntingdonshire Eyre von 1286

Abstract

Gelehrtes Recht oder gelebte Praxis? Kaufleute und ihre Vertreter im späten Mittelalter

Abstract

Fremde gegen Bürger. Zivilgerichtspraxis am Beispiel des Duisburger Notgerichts im 16. Jahrhundert

Abstract

unrechtliche peinliche schmehung oder dem gemeinen nutz nuetzlich?Eine Fallstudie zur Normenkonkurrenz im Schmähschriftprozess des 16. Jahrhunderts

Abstract

Zur Frage der Beziehung zwischen Recht und Trinken

Abstract

„Indo-European in Basis and Origin“. Das altirische Recht zwischen insularem Archaismus und europäischer Verflechtung

Abstract

Marginalia in Medieval Western Scandinavian Law Manuscripts

Abstract

Mittelalterliche Konfliktregelung von den Rändern her denken. Ein kurzer Kommentar

Kommentar: Vielfalt – rechtshistorische Signatur mittelalterlichen Rechts

Rezensionen