An unrivalled introduction to a fascinating subject, Law and Theology in the Middle Ages explores the relationship between law and theology in medieval Europe. Focusing on legal and theological responses to justice, mercy, fairness, and sin, this text examines the tension between ecclesiastical and secular authority in medieval Europe, illustrating areas of dispute in a clear and accessible way.

This title examines the tension between ecclesiastical and secular authority in medieval Europe by focusing upon the differences between legal and theological responses to concepts such as justice, mercy, fairness and sin. Central themes, the fundamental differences between virtue and keeping the peace, sin and breaking the law, are used to illustrate a wide range of practical and theoretical areas of dispute in a clear and accessible way. An introduction to a fascinating subject, this volume is an exploration of the relationship between academic study of law and theology in the Middle Ages.

Law | Book | Culture in the Middle Ages takes a detailed view on the role of manuscripts and the written word in legal cultures, spanning the medieval period across western and central Europe.

Canon law touched nearly every aspect of medieval society, including many issues we now think of as purely secular. It regulated marriages, oaths, usury, sorcery, heresy, university life, penance, just war, court procedure, and Christian relations with religious minorities. Canon law also regulated the clergy and the Church, one of the most important institutions in the Middle Ages. This Cambridge History offers a comprehensive survey of canon law, both chronologically and thematically. Written by an international team of scholars, it explores, in non-technical language, how it operated in the daily life of people and in the great political events of the time. The volume demonstrates that medieval canon law holds a unique position in the legal history of Europe. Indeed, the influence of medieval canon law, which was at the forefront of introducing and defining concepts such as 'equity,' 'rationality,' 'office,' and 'positive law,' has been enormous, long-lasting, and remarkably diverse.

This monumental study of medieval law and sexual conduct explores the origin and develpment of the Christian church's sex law and the systems of belief upon which that law rested. Focusing on the Church's own legal system of canon law, James A. Brundage offers a comprehensive history of legal doctrines–covering the millennium from A.D. 500 to 1500–concerning a wide variety of sexual behavior, including marital sex, adultery, homosexuality, concubinage, prostitution, masturbation, and incest. His survey makes strikingly clear how the system of sexual control in a world we have half-forgotten has shaped the world in which we live today. The regulation of marriage and divorce as we know it today, together with the outlawing of bigamy and polygamy and the imposition of criminal sanctions on such activities as sodomy, fellatio, cunnilingus, and bestiality, are all based in large measure upon ideas and beliefs about sexual morality that became law in Christian Europe in the Middle Ages. "Brundage's book is consistently learned, enormously useful, and frequently entertaining. It is the best we have on the relationships between theological norms, legal principles, and sexual practice."—Peter Iver Kaufman, Church History

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.

In the popular imagination, the Middle Ages are often associated with lawlessness. As historians have long recognized, however, medieval culture was characterized by an enormous respect for law, legal procedure, and the ideals of justice and equity. Many of our most important modern institutions and legal conceptions grew out of medieval law in its myriad forms (Roman, canon, common, customary, and feudal). Institutional structures represent only a small portion of the wider cultural field affected by—and affecting—law. In Law and the Illicit in Medieval Europe such distinguished scholars as Patrick Geary, William Chester Jordan, R. I. Moore, Edward M. Peters, and Susan Mosher Stuard make the case that the development of law is deeply implicated in the growth of medieval theology and Christian doctrine; the construction of discourses on sin, human nature, honor, and virtue; the multiplying forms governing chivalry, demeanor, and social interaction, including gender relations; and the evolution of scholasticism, from its institutional context within the university to its forms of presentation, argumentation, and proof.

The papers collected in this volume fall into three main groups. Those in the first group are concerned with the origin and early development of the idea of natural rights. The author argues here that the idea first grew into existence in the writings of the 12th-century canonists. The articles in the second group discuss miscellaneous aspects of medieval law and political thought. They include an overview of modern work on late medieval canon law. The final group of articles is concerned with the history of papal infallibility, with especial reference to the tradition of Franciscan ecclesiology and the contributions of John Peter Olivi and William of Ockham.

A collection of essays by Michael Sheehan, whose work and interpretation on medieval property, marriage, family, sexuality, and law has insprired scholars for 40 years.