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.

What is the difference between a stabbing in a tavern in London and one in a hostelry in the South of France? What happens when a spinster living in Paris finds knight in her bedroom wanting to marry her? Why was there a crime wave following the Black Death? From Aberdeen to Cracow and from Stockholm to Sardinia, Trevor Dean ranges widely throughout medieval Europe in this exiting and innovative history of lawlessness and criminal justice. Drawing on the real-life stories of ordinary men and women who often found themselves at the sharp end of the law, he shows how it was often one rule for the rich and another for the poor in a tangled web of judicial corruption.

Crime is a matter of interpretation, and never was this truer than in the Middle Ages, when societies faced with new ideas and pressures were continually forced to rethink what a crime was -- and what was a crime. This collection undertakes a thorough exploration of shifting definitions of crime and changing attitudes toward social control in medieval Europe. These essays reveal how various forces in medieval society interacted and competed in interpreting and influencing mechanisms for social control. Drawing on a wide range of historical and literary sources -- legal treatises, court cases, statutes, poems, romances, and comic tales -- the contributors consider topics including fear of crime, rape and violence against women, revenge and condemnations of crime, learned dispute about crime and social control, and legal and political struggles over hunting rights.

Many of the combatants in the European wars of the late middle ages fought for their own gain, but they observed a code of regulations, part chivalrous and part commercial which they called the ‘law of arms’. This book, originally published in 1965, examines this soldiers’ code, to understand its rules and how they were enforced. How did a soldier sue for ransom money if his prisoner would not pay it, and before what court? How did he know whether what he took by force was lawful spoil? As the answers to these and other questions reveal, the workings of the law of arms gave practical point to the contemporary cult of chivalry. It also had an important influence on the early development of ideas of international law.

Legal history is the study of how law has evolved over time, and why it has evolved. Legal history parallels the development of civilisations, and is a component of social history. Legal historians record the evolution of laws and provide an analysis of how these laws evolved, so that the origins of various legal concepts can be better understood. Some consider legal history to be a branch of intellectual history. Twentieth century historians assess in a more contextualised manner, much like social historians, viewing legal institutions as complex systems of rules, participants and symbols that have interacted with society to promote changes in certain aspects of civil society.

In 500, the legal order in Europe was structured around ancient customs, social practices and feudal values. By 1500, the effects of demographic change, new methods of farming and economic expansion had transformed the social and political landscape and had wrought radical change upon legal practices and systems throughout Western Europe. A Cultural History of Law in the Middle Ages explores this change and the rich and varied encounters between Christianity and Roman legal thought which shaped the period. Evolving from a combination of religious norms, local customs, secular legislations, and Roman jurisprudence, medieval law came to define an order that promoted new forms of individual and social representation, fostered the political renewal that heralded the transition from feudalism to the Early Modern state and contributed to the diffusion of a common legal language. Drawing upon a wealth of textual and visual sources, A Cultural History of Law in the Middle Ages presents essays that examine key cultural case studies of the period on the themes of justice, constitution, codes, agreements, arguments, property and possession, wrongs, and the legal profession.