Vernacular law : writing and the reinvention of customary law in Medieval France / Ada Maria Kuskowski, University of Pennsylvania.

Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2023.

©2023.

xviii, 412 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Based on author's thesis (doctoral - Cornell University, 2013) issued under title: Writing custom : juristic imagination and the composition of customary law in thirteenth-century France.

"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"-- Provided by publisher.

English

January 26, 2023

Studies in legal history.

Includes bibliographical references (pags 363-401) and index.

Customary law > France, Northern > History > To 1500.