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An account of the theoretical framework, legal complexities and enforcement of the French treason law.
In the popular imagination, the Middle Ages are often associated with lawlessness. However, historians have long recognized that medieval culture was characterized by an enormous respect for law and legal procedure. This book makes the case that one cannot understand the era's cultural trends without considering the profound development of law.
This volume is an introduction to the fifteenth century through chronicles and personal recollections of a diverse group of its French- and English-speaking writers. It revisits some of the principal events and personalities of that era through anecdotes illustrating interpersonal behavior. It examines how writers evaluated the conduct of their contemporaries and how some of their pessimistic conclusions may have contributed to the reputation for decadence of their century.
Volume I of the first complete English translation of the chronicles of Fernão Lopes chronicles the reign of Pedro I (1357-67), dubbed both 'the Just' and 'the Cruel', including his dealings with the kingdom of Castile, the war between Castile and Aragon, and the revenge he took on the men who murdered the woman he loved, Inês de Castro. Until now, the chronicles of Fernão Lopes (c.1380-c.1460) have only been available in critical editions or in partial translations. Comparable to the works of Froissart in France or López de Ayala in Spain, the chronicles provide a wealth of detail on late fourteenth-century politics, diplomacy, warfare and economic matters, courtly society, queenship and noble women, as well as more mundane concerns such as food, health and the purchasing power of a fluctuating currency. Lopes had a keen eye for detail and a perspective especially attuned to the common people, and his chronicles provide an invaluable source for the history of Western Europe in the later Middle Ages.
Insights from English and French writers on one of the most significant armed conflicts of the Middle Ages
Shlapentokh asserts that asocial behavior in both medieval France and the contemporary West is not a marginal occurrence but rather a mainstream phenomena, and one that can often be stopped by strong force as the only antidote to social chaos.
A Search for Sovereignty approaches world history by examining the relation of law and geography in European empires between 1400 and 1900. Lauren Benton argues that Europeans imagined imperial space as networks of corridors and enclaves, and that they constructed sovereignty in ways that merged ideas about geography and law. Conflicts over treason, piracy, convict transportation, martial law, and crime created irregular spaces of law, while also attaching legal meanings to familiar geographic categories such as rivers, oceans, islands, and mountains. The resulting legal and spatial anomalies influenced debates about imperial constitutions and international law both in the colonies and at home. This study changes our understanding of empire and its legacies and opens new perspectives on the global history of law.
Corruption is far from disappearing, yet now it inspires resignation rather than indignation - and as such, it has lost its power to scandalize. Jankowski claims that such transformations tell a tale. The state that once aspired to pre-eminence as the sole magnet of loyalty, touchstone of probity, and guarantor of right, has yielded significant ground to the individual who is now more likely to elevate his own dignity and cry scandal on his own behalf."--Jacket.
Walter Stapeldon, fifteenth bishop of Exeter, was the founder of Exeter College, Oxford, and the greatest of Edward II's treasurers of the Exchequer. As Edward's regime crumbled in 1326, he paid the price of his master's rapacious policies, of which he was the chief instrument. This study shows how the Plantagenet revolution in government, the most massive overhaul of the Exchequer ever undertaken in medieval England, was shaped with a clear financial purpose. On the basis of his extensive research in the Exchequer archives, Dr Buck reveals for the first time the extent and severity of the government's action on the levying of debts to the Crown, which, although initiated earlier, was exacerbated in the early 1320s when parliament and the clergy were refusing the king supply. Placing the policies of Stapeldon's treasurership in their political and parliamentary context, he argues that the Exchequer was Edward's most powerful weapon against the aristocratic opposition and in the process reassesses the accepted interpretation of these years of turmoil.
This is a comprehensive survey of medieval English mortmain legislation from both the point of view of the crown and that of the Church. It examines methods of enforcement and evaluates their success. It traces the emergence of licensing policies and the increasing exploitation of licences for fiscal purposes, while at the same time establishing that this was not their original purpose. The extent to which the Church was acquiring land on a threatening scale by the later thirteenth century is questioned, and the effects of the legislation on subsequent acquisition are assessed against the background of new fashions in ecclesiastical patronage and a more hostile economic climate. The statutes of 1279 and 1391 are well known. What this study shows is how much variation lay behind the apparently straightforward system of licensing and how closely the issue of mortmain tenure was related to wider social, political and economic considerations.