Significant Features of the Medieval Legal System

Informal power: In the early Middle Ages (circa 500-1100 AD), traditionally known as the «Dark Ages» of Western Europe, money and literacy were scarce and bureaucratic government or «state» was very weak in most places. The absence or weakness of bureaucratic states before about 1200 AD meant that local military and political power manifested itself mainly through interpersonal or «personal» relationships. These local social and political relations tended to subsume an individual`s legal rights, such as claims to status or property, so that in reality, «objective» legal claims did not have a separate existence. This was true even for powerful people such as nobles (or «lords») and kings, whose power ultimately depended less on their titles than on their ability to maintain the support of their peers and the cooperation of their immediate subordinates. These social relations were therefore based on mutual obligations or what we might call a kind of social contract. At the same time, however, these relationships also presupposed that people were unequal and held different ranks or positions of status within a God-ordained hierarchy. 2The first study group organised in this field was the Nederlandse Werkgroep Strafrechtgeschiedenis, founded in 1973 by Herman Diederiks. The group organized two international meetings in Amsterdam and Leiden in 1977 on the history of crime3 and another at the Edinburgh Conference on Economic and Social History in 19784. On this basis, the International Association for the History of Crime and Criminal Justice was founded, which became the first regular meeting place for researchers who had hitherto been scattered in different branches of history — as well as institutional and legal, economic and social, political, anthropological and cultural — with the practices of other researchers in the social sciences (lawyers, criminologists, sociologists, anthropologists). Between 1978 and 1995, the Association organized a series of «intercontinental» conferences and about twenty thematic symposia, mainly at the Maison des Sciences de l`Homme in Paris. They also began publishing a bulletin in 1972, later called Bulletin 5.

41Social integration and exclusion are another decisive social element. The very different positions within the network of justice systems of long-term residents, newcomers, migrants and outcasts (such as vagrants and the unemployed) were mainly examined as urban phenomena. In many cases, their behavior does not seem to differ significantly from that of the criminal stereotypes they would create: the vagrant, the thief, the itinerant salesman, the thief, the witch and the prostitute. Again, it has evolved from a relatively simple view of the psychosocial mechanisms commonly believed to explain the behavior of marginalized or deviant groups to the multiple associations at the interpersonal and collective levels revealed by the traumatic event called «crime»54; Judicial archives have allowed researchers to refine the history of social groups, their interrelations and the construction of the mechanisms they identify. 70In this context, the emergence of prison as a response to illegality seems clear. The condemnation of prison can be linked to that of forced labour, galleys or deportation, as it replaces corporal punishment (especially marking, flogging and expulsion), which is increasingly seen as an ineffective regulator of the migrant and impoverished population. The development of various forms of imprisonment is very much akin to a revolution at the end of the Ancien Régime, when the bourgeois classes gained political power throughout Europe74. 69The problem of the endemic poverty of a very large part of the inhabitants could be included alongside the problem of vagrancy. In both urban and rural areas, civilian-controlled justice systems were obsessed with theft and extensive damage to forests and fields caused by the practice of collecting women, children and the elderly.72 Ende of 18.

In the nineteenth century, seigneurial entrepreneurs interested in the rational exploitation of their property reduced the rights to use communal lands and criminalized certain activities considered customs. Justice thus became class justice, a means for the ruling classes to impose their social priorities and economic objectives on the popular classes73. The professor of medieval history says that for Gratian, the story of Adam and Eve represents some of the most fundamental elements of the legal system. «When Adam bites into the forbidden fruit, God cries out to him, `Adam, where are you?` Gratian interprets this question to mean that Adam is summoned to court. God accuses Adam of his crime and he has the opportunity to defend himself. As we know, his defense was Eve`s fault, but it`s a valid defense. Bartolus` most important disciple was Baldus of Ubaldis, who studied with him and later taught with him in Perugia. Like many great medieval jurists, Baldus was an iuris utriuscan physician trained in both laws. As early as the middle of the twelfth century, the term utrumque ius, «one and the other», describes the combined study of Roman and canon civil law. This tradition of dual study reflects the close relationship between two fields and, in particular, the debt owed by canon law to civil law as a formal discipline in its analytical and procedural foundation and terminology. Baldus was a prolific teacher – in addition to his thirty-three years in Perguia, he also taught in Bologna, Pisa, Florence, Padua and Pavia.