Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Table of Contents
- List of figures, maps, plans and timelines
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Profiles: Three late medieval law courts
- 2 Legal space
- 3 The rituality of court practice
- 4 Legal text and social context
- 5 Court and society: The production and consumption of justice
- General conclusion
- Appendix 1 Utrecht
- Appendix 2 York
- Appendix 3 Paris
- Bibliography
- Index
General conclusion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 November 2022
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Table of Contents
- List of figures, maps, plans and timelines
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Profiles: Three late medieval law courts
- 2 Legal space
- 3 The rituality of court practice
- 4 Legal text and social context
- 5 Court and society: The production and consumption of justice
- General conclusion
- Appendix 1 Utrecht
- Appendix 2 York
- Appendix 3 Paris
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Abstract
During the later Middle Ages law courts were established in numerous urban localities, following broader demographic and intellectual trends, as well as local or regional socio-political modalities. The comparative study of three courts of varying size and character in Utrecht, York and Paris shows how these courts’ search for institutional legitimacy led them to employ specific scripts of justice to influence people's legal literacy. The five scripts distinguished here, those of accessibility, physicality, rituality, semantic linking and narrativity, combined multiple media, including texts, spaces, oral statements and physical acts, while actively engaging different agents beyond the court in performing them. Given this multi-authored character of judicial performance, courts’ textual records should be understood in terms of negotiations over the concepts and practices of justice.
Keywords: medieval law courts, legal communication, legal theatre, comparative history, medieval court records
‘There is no doubt’, said K., ‘there is no doubt, that behind all the statements of this court, and in my case also behind the arrest and the current investigation, there stands a large organization. One that comprises not only bribable guards, oafish supervisors and at best unpretentious magistrates, but that also maintains a judiciary of a high or even the highest level, along with its myriad, inescapable entourage of servants, scribes, policemen and other assistants, perhaps even executioners – I’m not afraid of using that word. And the purpose of this organization, gentlemen? Its purpose is to arrest innocent people and to begin a pointless procedure against them which, as in my case, usually leads to no result.’
Thus Franz Kafka, often considered the father of modern bureaucratic horror, imagined justice. In his novel Der Prozess he sketched the vicissitudes of a man caught in a legal process whose exact cause and procedure remain obscure. Notwithstanding people's best intentions to help the protagonist with his case, no character in the story ever seems able to fully understand or work the system behind these proceedings. Kafka gave words to a fear of being caught up in the infernal machinations of a faceless legal bureaucracy, whose sole reason for existence was the realization of a purposeless show called the legal process.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Scripting Justice in Late Medieval EuropeLegal Practice and Communication in the Law Courts of Utrecht, York and Paris, pp. 247 - 260Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2022