We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
To save content items to your account,
please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.
If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account.
Find out more about saving content to .
To save content items to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected]
is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings
on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part
of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations.
‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi.
‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Between the fourth and tenth centuries, across most of western Europe, law, legal institutions, and legal procedures became Christianized, in the sense that Christian rhetorical tropes, ideologies, and existential perspectives infused legal expression and practices. Royal and imperial courts were sites for interweaving secular and ecclesiastical authority, and hence for interweaving secular and ecclesiastical law. Such interweaving found voice in “mixed assemblies,” that is, assemblies in which both higher clergy and secular nobility participated in judicial and legislative processes; documents issued under the name of a king or emperor also show the integration of secular and ecclesiastical law. Law was not exclusively developed and implemented at royal courts and assemblies: complementing governmental efforts to instantiate Christian law, the educated elite took an interest in law, both as a subject for study and as a resource for informing arbitration, prosecution, or defense of rights and privileges. One of the many streams of legal formation was the practice of collecting, compiling, and conserving decrees and judicial opinions that would, in time, constitute the core of the canon law of subsequent centuries.
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.
Recommend this
Email your librarian or administrator to recommend adding this to your organisation's collection.