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As broad in scope as the interests of its honoree, this volume brings together leading historians of early English and continental law to pay tribute to Lisi Oliver. The essays gathered here range from the earliest laws of the kings of Kent in the seventh century to the reception of Old English law in the seventeenth. Interested both in how law was made and the ways in which it was applied, the contributors explore the careers of such prominent legislators as Alfred the Great and Wulfstan of York while also examining issues of gender, social status and textual transmission. This volume will be essential reading for anyone interested in the history of law, the legal culture of Anglo-Saxon England, and the emergence of modern concepts of self and statehood in the early middle ages.
The laws of Æthelbert of Kent (ca. 600), Hlohere and Eadric (685x686), and Wihtred (695), are the earliest laws from Anglo-Saxon England, and the first Germanic laws written in the vernacular. They are of unique importance as the only extant early medieval English laws that delineate the progress of law and legal language in the early days of the conversion to Christianity. Æthelbert's laws, the closest existing equivalent to Germanic law as it was transmitted in a pre-literate period, contrast with Hlohere and Eadric's expanded laws, which concentrate on legal procedure and process, and again contrast with the further changed laws of Wihtred which demonstrate how the new religion of Christianity adapted and changed the law to conform to changing social mores. This volume updates previous works with current scholarship in the fields of linguistics and social and legal history to present new editions and translations of these three Kentish pre-Alfredian laws. Each body of law is situated within its historical, literary, and legal context, annotated, and provided with facing-page translation.
Valuable new insights into the multi-layered and multi-directional relationship of law, literature, and social regulation in pre-Conquest English society. Pre-Conquest English law was among the most sophisticated in early medieval Europe. Composed largely in the vernacular, it played a crucial role in the evolution of early English identity and exercised a formative influence on the development of the Common Law. However, recent scholarship has also revealed the significant influence of these legal documents and ideas on other cultural domains, both modern and pre-modern. This collection explores the richness of pre-Conquest legal writing by looking beyond its traditional codified form. Draw...
Law and Order in Anglo-Saxon England explores English legal culture and practice across the Anglo-Saxon period, beginning with the essentially pre-Christian laws enshrined in writing by King AEthelberht of Kent in c. 600 and working forward to the Norman Conquest of 1066. It attempts to escape the traditional retrospective assumptions of legal history, focused on the late twelfth-century Common Law, and to establish a new interpretative framework for the subject, more sensitive to contemporary cultural assumptions and practical realities. The focus of the volume is on the maintenance of order: what constituted good order; what forms of wrongdoing were threatening to it; what roles kings, lor...
Old English scholars of the mid-seventeenth century lived through some of the most turbulent times in English history but, this book argues, the upheaval inspired them to produce some of the most famous landmark texts in early Old English studies.England in the 1640s and 1650s experienced civil wars, regicide, and unprecedented debate over religious and social structures, but it also saw several milestones in the field of early medieval English studies. This book argues that the scholars of Old English who produced these works did so not in spite but because of the intense political upheaval surrounding them. The opening chapters examine the book collecting and lexicographic endeavors of the...
This volume offers the first comprehensive account of the monetary logic that guided the payment of wergild and blood money in early medieval conflict resolution. In the early middle ages, wergild played multiple roles: it was used to measure a person’s status, to prevent and end conflicts, and to negotiate between an individual and the agents of statehood. This collection of interlocking essays by historians, philologists and jurists represents a major contribution to the study of law and society in Western Europe during the early Middle Ages. Contributors are Lukas Bothe, Warren Brown, Stefan Esders, Wolfgang Haubrichs, Paul Hyams, Tom Lambert, Ralph W. Mathisen, Rob Meens, Han Nijdam, Lisi Oliver, Harald Siems, Karl Ubl, and Helle Vogt. See inside the book.
Felix Liebermann’s Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen (1903-1916) remains the single most important contribution to the study of early English law. This volume marks the Gesetze’s centenary by bringing together original essays by an international group of leading scholars specializing in medieval legal culture. The essays address not only Liebermann’s life and legacy, but also major issues in the study of early law, including the relationship between Old English legal and penitential texts, the provenance of early English legal manuscripts, the composition and dating of pre-Magna Carta legislation, and the nature of Anglo-Saxon and Norman legal practice and procedure. This collection provides an essential assessment of the current state of early legal studies as well as a roadmap for future work. Contributors are Hideyuki Arimitsu, Rebecca Brackmann, Daniela Fruscione, R.D. Fulk, Thomas Gobbitt, Janelle Greenberg, John Hudson, Stefan Jurasinski, Nicholas Karn, T.B. Lambert, Andrew Rabin, Mary P. Richards, Richard Sharpe, and Jürg Rainer Schwyter.
The discovery in Sonderhausen of a fragmentary psalter glossed in Latin and Old English allows fresh inferences to be drawn regarding the study of the psalter in Anglo-Saxon England, and of the transmission of the corpus of vernacular psalter glosses. A detailed textual and palaeographical study of the Wearmouth-Jarrow bibles leads to the exciting possibility that the hand of Bede can be identified, annotating the text of the Bible which he no doubt played an instrumental role in establishing. Two Latin texts from the circle of Archbishop Wulfstan are published here in full, whilst disciplined philological and historical analysis helps to clarify a puzzling reference in 'thelbert's law-code to the early medieval practice of providing food render for the king. Finally, the volume contains two pioneering essays in the histoire des mentalités. The usual comprehensive bibliography of the previous year's publications in all branches of Anglo-Saxon studies rounds off the book.
Wounds were a potent signifier reaching across all aspects of life in Europe in the middle ages, and their representation, perception and treatment is the focus of this volume. Following a survey of the history of medical wound treatment in the middle ages, paired chapters explore key themes situating wounds within the context of religious belief, writing on medicine, status and identity, and surgical practice. The final chapter reviews the history of medieval wounding through the modern imagination. Adopting an innovative approach to the subject, this book will appeal to all those interested in how past societies regarded health, disease and healing and will improve knowledge of not only the practice of medicine in the past, but also of the ethical, religious and cultural dimensions structuring that practice.
Anglo-Saxon authorities often punished lawbreakers with harsh corporal penalties, such as execution, mutilation and imprisonment. Despite their severity, however, these penalties were not arbitrary exercises of power. Rather, they were informed by nuanced philosophies of punishment which sought to resolve conflict, keep the peace and enforce Christian morality. The ten essays in this volume engage legal, literary, historical, and archaeological evidence to investigate the role of punishment in Anglo-Saxon society. Three dominant themes emerge in the collection. First is the shift from a culture of retributive feud to a system of top-down punishment, in which penalties were imposed by an auth...