Over a period of some five centuries, Europe was transformed by the emergence of barbarian kingdoms in the regions of the former Roman Empire. In the turbulent post-Roman world, the Christian church a
Written with a vigor and passion rarely found in a scholarly text, this broad history of the western European legal tradition is now available in an elegant and lucid translation from the original It
An updated and expanded version of the original edition, published in 1998. That original edition went up through 1245. This new version extends to 1317 and adds two important prefaces.Praise for the
In the first detailed study of papal penitentiary materials on marriage, renowned medieval historian Ludwig Schmugge tells the exciting stories of seduced maidens, too-closely-related husbands and wiv
Liberty and Law examines a previously underappreciated theme in legal history—the idea of permissive natural law. The idea is mentioned only peripherally, if at all, in modern histories of natural law
This book presents the first full-scale study of the Tractatus de penitentia (C.33 q.3) in Gratian's Decretum, which became the textbook for canon law and served as the basis of the church's developin
"This is an extremely well-researched and well-presented study that is informed by meticulous textual analysis from the manuscripts...Yet this book goes even further in that Larson asks the reader to
Cy-près doctrine, which allows the purpose of a failing or impractical charitable gift to be changed, has been understood since the eighteenth century as a medieval canon law principle, derived from R
In a series of essays based on surviving documents of actual court practicesfrom Perugia and Bologna, as well as laws, statutes, and theoreticalworks from the 12th and 13th centuries, Massimo Valleran
When Italian monk Gratian began assembling and reconciling literature on Christian discipline during the early 12th century, the definition of theology was so narrow that he would not have thought of
In the pallium the medieval papacy created a mechanism of control over the far-flung bishops of the Latin church, a prerogative by which the popes shared honor and power with local prelates—and simult
The first book to include full texts and photographs from the Apostolic Penitentiary, A Sip from the "Well of Grace" is groundbreaking in its analysis of one of the most important papal offices of the
