Institute for Medieval Studies

Session	535
Title	Jurisdiction, Legal Community, and Political Discourse, 900-1200, I
Date/Time	Tuesday 5 July 2022: 09.00-10.30
Organiser	Alice Taylor, Department of History, King's College London
Moderator/Chair	Helle Vogt, Center for Interdisciplinære Retlige Studier (CIS), Københavns Universitet
Paper 535-a	Drawing a (Legal) Line?: Papal and Episcopal Jurisdiction in the Later 12th Century (Language: English) Danica Summerlin, Department of History, University of Sheffield Index Terms: Canon Law; Ecclesiastical History; Law; Manuscripts and Palaeography
Paper 535-b	Thinking about Legal Community in Early Medieval England (Language: English) Tom Lambert, Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge Index Terms: Anthropology; Law; Literacy and Orality; Political Thought
Paper 535-c	Law and Politics in 12th-Century Public Discourse: Two Separate Fields? (Language: English) Alice Taylor, Department of History, King's College London Index Terms: Charters and Diplomatics; Historiography - Modern Scholarship; Law; Politics and Diplomacy
Abstract	The central Middle Ages (1050-1250) has been traditionally understood as a transformative period for European legal history, with the 're-discovery' of Roman law providing rulers with new intellectual tools to define their power and authority. This has led to two narratives: the growth of papal and imperial claims to pan-European legal supremacy and the evolution of distinct bodies of national law which developed in conflict with one another. However, recent research is demonstrating that, instead of a Europe of competing jurisdictional blocks delineated through clear boundaries, these legal traditions were intellectually and socially interdependent. This session is intended to offer broad responses to the subjects of jurisdictional boundaries, the relationship between law and politics, and how we might understand legal 'communities' in this period.