Vernacular Law: Writing and the Reinvention of Customary Law in Medieval France [Hardcover]

A new understanding of the transformative effect of vernacular writing on customary law in medieval France.Ada Maria Kuskowski traces the impact of writing, language, learned ideas and court practices on the development of customary law in medieval France. Applying a multidisciplinary approach, this book will interest scholars of medieval France across law, literature and history.Ada Maria Kuskowski traces the impact of writing, language, learned ideas and court practices on the development of customary law in medieval France. Applying a multidisciplinary approach, this book will interest scholars of medieval France across law, literature and history.Custom was fundamental to medieval legal practice. Whether in a property dispute or a trial for murder, the aggrieved and accused would go to lay court where cases were resolved according to custom. What custom meant, however, went through a radical shift in the medieval period. Between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, custom went from being a largely oral and performed practice to one that was also conceptualized in writing. Based on French lawbooks known as coutumiers, Ada Maria Kuskowski traces the repercussions this transformation  in the form of custom from unwritten to written and in the language of law from elite Latin to common vernacular  had on the cultural world of law. Vernacular Law offers a new understanding of the formation of a new field of knowledge: authors combined ideas, experience and critical thought to write lawbooks that made disparate customs into the field known as customary law.Introduction: vernacular writing and the transformation of customary law in Medieval France; Part I. Written Custom and the Formation of Vernacular Law: 1. What is custom? Concept and literary practice; 2. Composing customary law as a vernacular law; 3. Writing a 'ius?non scriptum': writtenness, memory and change; Part II. Political and Intellectual Tensions: 4. Uneasy jurisdictions: lay and ecclesiastical law; 5lS+