HIST-308 Lecture Notes - Lecture 26: Corpus Juris Civilis, Manorialism
17 Nov 2020
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Document Summary
The revival of law was the second great achievement of the twelfth-century renaissance. The lawlessness of the tenth and eleventh centuries spawned as great an interest in legal reform as in ecclesiastical reform. Feudalism and manorialism, as they developed, addressed some of these concerns. in reality they raised as many problems as they solved. A free gascon scholar, in other words, still lived according to gascon legal traditions even if he or she lived in burgundy; Milanese merchants residing in marseilles were judged by the customs of milan; the jews of london lived according to jewish law and answered to jewish officials. The growing medieval passion for rationalized order demanded something different than the personality of the law. Until the twelfth century most people in latin europe had a different conception of law than we do. Law to them was not a body of regulations and privileges to be created, modified, or repealed as the jurisdictional authorities deemed fit.
