Legal Practice and the Written Word in the Early Middle Ages: Frankish Formulae, c. 500-1000 (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series, Series Number 75) - Softcover

Rio, Alice

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1107402832 ISBN 13: 9781107402836

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2011

Synopsis

Legal formularies are books of model legal documents compiled by early medieval scribes for their own use and that of their pupils. A major source for the history of early medieval Europe, they document social relations beyond the narrow world of the political elite. Formularies offer much information regarding the lives of ordinary people: sales and gifts of land, divorces, adoptions, and disputes over labour as well as theft, rape or murder. Until now, the use of formularies as a historical source has been hampered by severe methodological problems, in particular through the difficulty of establishing a precise chronological or geographical context for them. By examining Frankish legal formularies from the Merovingian and Carolingian periods, this book provides an invaluable, detailed analysis of the problems and possibilities associated with formularies, and will be required reading for scholars of early medieval history.

About this title

Book Description:

Legal formularies provide modern historians with information on many aspects of ordinary life in early medieval Europe, from labour and land agreements to cases which we would nowadays associate with criminal law. This book provides a detailed analysis of formularies, setting out their problems and possibilities as historical sources.

About the Author:

Alice Rio is Osborn Fellow in Medieval History and Culture, Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1107402832
• ISBN 13: 9781107402836
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 312