As Osvaldo Cavallar and Julius Kirshner remind us in the introduction to Jurists and Jurisprudence in Medieval Italy, the civil law codes of Continental Europe, Latin America, Japan, Scotland, the state of Louisiana, and the province of Quebec all derive from the ius commune of late medieval Europe. This alone might be reason enough for students of legal history to delve into this edited collection of sources, but the translations of legal treatises and opinions contained in this volume deliver a great deal more than an origin story for modern civil law codes.
From the twelfth century on, drawing on Justinian's Corpus iuris, jurists in the Italian peninsula began to compile collections of Roman law and canon law. In the fourteenth century, the phrase ius commune came to serve as an umbrella term encompassing Roman civil law and canon law. In Jurists and Jurisprudence in Medieval Italy, Cavallar and Kirshner bring together dozens of texts composed by leading jurists of the Central and Northern Italian cities. These sources, many of which appear here in English for the first time (a few have been available only in manuscript form until now), constitute the six parts of this collection: Professors and Students; the Legal Profession; Civil and Criminal Procedure; Crime; Personal and Civic Status; and Family Matters. The editors’ selection of sources runs from the twelfth to the early sixteenth century, and while the authors featured include many well-known figures (Bartolus of Sassoferrato, Baldus de Ubaldis, Azo, Francesco Zabarella, and Francesco Guicciardini, to list a few), the editors have also included a few anonymous tracts as well as selections by lesser-known individuals. Of particular interest are the many consilia, legal opinions that were solicited from leading jurists as entities (such as a court or interested party) attempted to resolve a dispute. While these consilia were nonbinding, they illuminate how medieval jurists reasoned and they capture the interplay between law and society. The selections address everyday legal disputes, but also much broader questions concerning the structures of society and the role of the law in maintaining or forming those structures.
This volume features a superlative critical apparatus to accompany the sources. The introduction stands as a lucid and erudite overview of the history of medieval law. In particular, the discussion about the development of the ius commune will be helpful to graduate students, and the explanation of how consilia worked is illuminating.
In addition, each of the six sections is given its own introduction. These offer biographical details of the authors of the sources while also fleshing out a contextual panorama against which to assess the translated text. Where warranted, the editors allude to modern echoes of some of these matters in today's legal landscape (abortion and citizenship being two examples). While the introductory notes are valuable in contextualizing each source, they also open up possibilities for the editors to offer scholarly interventions. For instance, in the section on personal and civic status, Cavallar and Kirshner offer their own interpretation of the complexities of the civic status of Jews in various Italian cities. For readers interested in the social and cultural valences of the law, it bears mentioning that these introductory notes present a rich cultural tapestry of life in medieval Italian cities. We learn of the lives of students, the hierarchical world of doctors of law, gendered discrepancies in the punishments meted out for adultery, and much more.
Each section also includes a superb bibliography, and there is an extensive glossary at the end of the volume. The translations of the sources themselves are first rate, conveying the nuances of the legal particulars these jurists wrote about, in a language that feels vibrant and unstilted. The translations render the volume accessible to specialists and nonspecialists alike.
The collection focuses on Central and Northern Italy. Occasionally the editors invoke a broader geography, noting practices that extended to Southern France and Iberia. I appreciated these glimpses of a wider context and would have liked even more. That said, the editors had to draw parameters for an already substantial collection, and the volume elucidates the legal history of late medieval Italy brilliantly.
In sum, this is an extensive and illuminating collection pertaining to medieval European legal history and to the social and cultural contexts of the law as taught and practiced, primarily in Italy, from the twelfth century to the sixteenth. The selection of sources covers a wide variety of legal topics, including some that are particularly relevant today (e.g., abortion, self-defense in committing homicide, citizenship). This volume is geared to nonspecialists and will be appreciated by graduate students in legal history, law students, and scholars, as well as by advanced undergraduates.
