| Signs and Portents |
[Oct. 15th, 2009|06:16 pm] |
I parted my hair in a different place this morning and discovered that I have half a dozen grey hairs.
I take this as nature's way of telling me that it's time I finished my dissertation. |
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| A half-digested idea |
[Aug. 28th, 2009|07:14 pm] |
Via a great post by Magistra et Mater, I just ran across an interesting article about the reasoning processes of people who have not been exposed to scientific thought. It paraphrases an interview conducted in a remote part of Russia several decades ago.
White bears and Novaya Zemlya
Q: All bears are white where there is always snow; in Novaya Zemlya there is always snow; what color are the bears there?
A: I have seen only black bears and I do not talk of what I have not seen.
Q: But what do my words imply?
A; If a person has not been there he can not say anything on the basis of words. If a man was 60 or 80 and had seen a white bear there and told me about it, he could be believed.
Camels and Germany
Q: There are no camels in Germany; B is a city in Germany; are there camels there?
A: I don't know, I have never seen German villages. If B is a large city, there should be camels there.
Q: But what if there are none in all of Germany?
A: Perhaps this is a small village within a large city and there is no room for camels.
This mode of thinking sounds similar to some of the things I've found in my research on medieval legal procedure. In the Middle Ages, things start to get interesting when the reputation of the man from Novaya Zemlya is challenged... |
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| French Custumals / Coutumiers de la France |
[Jan. 14th, 2009|03:05 pm] |
Custumals are reference guides that medieval jurists wrote for one another so that they could learn and remember the unwritten customary laws in the region where they worked. I use them quite often in my research, and in the process of tracking down some of the more obscure ones, I've discovered that many of them are available online now. For the benefit of anyone else who finds this stuff useful, I'm going to list some of the important ones here.
Editing French custumals seems to be academically unfashionable at the moment (and by "at the moment" I mean for the last hundred years), so nearly all of these editions are the most recent ones you can get.
Ableiges, Jacques d'. Le grand coutumier de la France. Eds. Laboulaye & Dareste. 1868.
Ancien coutumier inédit de Picardie (1300-1323). Ed. M.A.J. Marnier. 1840.
Beaumanoir, Philippe de. Coutumes de Beauvaisis. Ed. A. Salmon. Vol. 1, 1899. Vol. 2, 1900. (The Akehurst translation is available for a fee from Questia.)
Boutillier, Jean. Somme Rural. Ed. L. Charondas Le Caron. 1621. This is hardly the most recent edition, but since the text is hard to get, it's better than nothing.
Coutumes et institutions de l'Anjou et du Maine. Ed. M. C.-J. Beautemps-Beaupré. Vol. 1.1, 1877. Vol. 1.2, 1878. Vol. 1.3, 1879.
Coutumier d'Artois. Ed. E.J. Tardif. 1883.
The Etablissements de Saint Louis: Law Texts from Tours, Orléans and Paris. Ed. and tr. F. R. P. Akehurst. 1996. This is a Google Book with only some of the text.
Le grand coustumier du pays et duché de Normandie. Ed. Le Rouillé. 1539. This is a very old edition, but it's what's available online. Tardif's edition of the other custumals of Normandy doesn't seem to be available on the internet.
Li Livres de Jostice et de Plet. Ed. Rapetti. 1850. |
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| A classic from the B-list |
[Oct. 23rd, 2008|06:41 pm] |
Some works of literature are just so dreadful, they cross the line into the sublime. While surfing Google Books to see if any interesting legal history had been posted lately, I happened across this gem. It can only be described as a mash-up of Sir Walter Scott and Edward Bulwer-Lytton, with a side-dish of nineteenth-century BDSM. Particularly entertaining is the preface, where the author protests that he's not ripping off Ivanhoe and has no political agenda. (A book about the evils of slavery written in the U.S. in 1855: hmmm...) See also the first line of the story, which is so long, it doesn't end until the next page.
The trial by combat scene at the end shows a surprising amount of historical accuracy. The court and the procedural rules belong to the second half of the fourteenth century, about two hundred years too late for the setting of the story, but considering how little had been published in the field by 1855, that's pretty good research. |
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| Flinging poo in medieval France |
[Sep. 23rd, 2008|06:16 pm] |
In the thirteenth century, Orléans was an important centre for the study of French law. And what, you might ask, occupied the great legal minds of the day? Apparently it was the subject of flinging poo.
The Livre de Jostice et de Plet, a legal textbook, explains what to do when the shit hits.*
BOOK XIX, CHAPTER XVII
1. Vile filth is indeed a misdeed when one flings it without reason. Vile filth is that which is so stinky that it corrupts the air; and that which is otherwise does not constitute it, if one could keep it at home until the next day.
2. He who throws filth on a man ought to make amends.
3. One may ask: if one has thrown filth on a man, are there grounds for trial by combat (point de gage)? And the response is that if a little bit of filth is thrown, and does not draw blood, or injure, or maim, or cause more than five sous of damage, there are no grounds for battle and the choice of proof lies with the plaintiff. But if big filth is flung, which causes big damage, or an injury, or a cut which causes big damage, in that case there are grounds.
4. One can initiate legal action against someone who resides in a house [from which poo is thrown anonymously?], but it is not the same as accusing a man.
5. Pierre has thrown some filth on me, by which he has done me injury and ten sous worth of damage; and he saw this. And if he says that he did not see this, I am prepared to show and swear as I ought. And Pierre could counter with such denial and defence as he ought. And one would say that Pierre is liable to bear law and to recognize that it was seen or to counter the charge with battle.
6. Concerning damage, one cannot accuse without guarantors, and with guarantors one can.
*The quick and dirty translation is mine |
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| I'm oooold |
[Sep. 5th, 2008|09:16 am] |
My smallish hometown had no middle school, so the high school went from grades seven to thirteen. By the last year of high school, the grade sevens started to look like they belonged in a nursery school. As I head out to do an AEMMA demo at the University of Toronto clubs fair, it occurs to me that the current crop of frosh were in nursery school when I was in grade 13. It's time I graduated already. |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 2nd, 2008|07:40 pm] |
Still flailing through the mire that is medieval French property law. Why did it not occur to me three years ago that writing a dissertation that spanned two kingdoms and nearly a thousand years might be, you know, hard?
On a surprisingly related note, ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) zornhau has a good post today about what makes fantasy unique as a genre. I was thinking just this afternoon that you could make an endless series of Kurosawa-style samurai movies based on the stories found in eleventh-century charters mentioning judicial duels. |
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| Whee! |
[Mar. 27th, 2007|01:07 am] |
You know you're an incurable medievalist geek when the accidental discovery of an online database of French cartularies fills you with glee.
And check out the Ordonnances de l'hôtel du roi, which ennumerate all the staff of the French kings around 1300. Those are just such nifty records of the daily life of royalty. If my dissertation was coming along faster than it is, I would take the time to translate them for the benefit of fantasy writers trying to do some realistic worldbuilding. |
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| Trial by combat |
[Jan. 31st, 2007|05:02 pm] |
Courtesy of the British National Archives website, I can now share with you my favorite image of a judicial duel. I give you Blowberme v Stare [1249].
Walter Blowberme, a thief pictured fighting on the left, became an approver, which is to say he agreed to convict some of his thieving accomplices by judicial duels in return for his own freedom. He accused Hamo the Stare of helping him to steal some clothing. The unlucky Hamo lost the battle and is pictured hanging on the gallows. That's what happens if you lie spent in posta longa when your opponant still has half a tempo to play with. But why does Walter appear to be traversing to the left, when that's where Hamo's weapon is? And what are the heads of those duelling batons made of, anyway? Such are the important questions that occupy my day. |
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| Who's on first? |
[Dec. 4th, 2006|01:51 pm] |
On one page of my dissertation, I have to cite the Roman chronicler Livy and two historians named Levi and Lévy. Even I can't keep the names straight. |
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| Sick and cranky |
[Oct. 3rd, 2006|05:34 pm] |
Bleah. I suppose I could be lucky on this sixth try, but I suspect that my annual Ontario Graduate Scholarship application is just a waste of time. Let's face it: a better understanding of medieval trial by combat won't really do much for the greater good of humanity.
There's also the little problem of what could go wrong if I actually won a scholarship. Remember last year, when John Tory started asking questions in the legislature about OGS grants? Well, judicial duelling is probably an even easier target than flying squirrel reproduction. |
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| Today's favourite quote |
[Sep. 1st, 2006|02:10 am] |
"Anything worth doing is worth doing wrong, because it is only by doing it wrong that you can learn to do it right."
--Anonymous
Now, back to struggling with the dissertation. |
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