Legal Practice and the Written Word in the Early Middle Ages

Frankish Formulae, C. 500-1000

Bibliographic Data

ID23497372
AuthorsAlice Rio (0000-0002-2785-217X)
Year2009
Publication date2009-01-01
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueLegal Practice and the Written Word in the Early Middle Ages (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherCambridge University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1017/cbo9780511581359
ISBN9780511581359
Open LibraryOL34437876M
LanguageEN
Citations received17

Legal formularies are books of model legal documents compiled by early medieval scribes for their own use and that of their pupils. A major source for the history of early medieval Europe, they document social relations beyond the narrow world of the political elite. Formularies offer much information regarding the lives of ordinary people: sales and gifts of land, divorces, adoptions, and disputes over labour as well as theft, rape or murder. Until now, the use of formularies as a historical source has been hampered by severe methodological problems, in particular through the difficulty of establishing a precise chronological or geographical context for them. By examining Frankish legal formularies from the Merovingian and Carolingian periods, this book provides an invaluable, detailed analysis of the problems and possibilities associated with formularies, and will be required reading for scholars of early medieval history.

Diplomatics · Early works to 1800 · Europe · Forms (Frankish law) · Formularies (Diplomatics) · Frankish Law · History · LAW · Medieval · Middle ages · Sources