Shifting Landmarks: Property, Proof, and Dispute in Catalonia around the Year 1000

Jeffrey A. Bowman

Published by Cornell University Press 2004

Shifting Landmarks

Property, Proof, and Dispute in Catalonia around the Year 1000

Jeffrey A. Bowman

In the series Conjunctions of Religion and Power in the Medieval Past

https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501721045

Overview
Contents

About this book

In a major contribution to the debate among medievalists about the nature of social and political change in Europe around the turn of the millennium, Jeffrey A. Bowman explores how people contended over property during the tenth and eleventh centuries...

Author / Editor information

Jeffrey A. Bowman is John B. McCoy-Bank One Distinguished Teaching Professor of History at Kenyon College.

Reviews

Choice 42:2, October 2004:

This is a fine example of using microhistorical techniques to illustrate broad historiographic issues. Using two hundred Catalan charters from 985 to 1060, Bowman provides a finely textured regional history situated within larger debates about continuity and change around the year 1000.... Bowman proposes gradual shifts in the landscape of property relations resulting from competing paradigms of proof, justice, and authority. All medievalists interested in law, land, institutions, and feudalism will gain much from this clear, well-written book.

Penelope D. Johnson, New York University:

Prevailing thought suggests that a feudal revolution took place in Europe in the early eleventh century as public order fell to the private control of greedy local magnates. An impressive fund of knowledge, gained in a detailed examination of property disputes and the means of proof argued by litigants over contested holdings, has led Jeffrey Bowman to argue that the disputes arose not out of 'feudal anarchy,' but rather from competing legal traditions. Bowman's elegant new thesis promises to become the new paradigm for legal-political theorizing about the Middle Ages, and Shifting Landmarks will find itself on required reading lists for Medieval Literature of the Field courses taken by the graduate students of the future.

David Nirenberg, The Johns Hopkins University:

Jeffrey Bowman presents a beautifully written and clear-eyed view of a pivotal moment in the development of medieval attitudes toward property, power, and literacy. Shifting Landmarks is required reading for anyone interested in the formations of legal sensibility in Western Europe.

Stephen P. Bensch, Swarthmore College:

Jeffrey Bowman examines dispute records as dramatic flash points rather than as normative settlements and thereby successfully challenges accepted views about the continuity of written law in the Latin Mediterranean. This work transforms current debates on the Feudal Revolution.

Warren Brown, California Institute of Technology:

Bowman's chapters dedicated to the careers of Catalan judges and the day-to-day practice of law and adjudication will prove extremely interesting for both legal and institutional historians of the early Middle Ages.... From a close study of the prologues of many different types of contemporary legal documents,... Bowman fashions a clear portrait of Catalan judges who, unlike their counterparts from many other parts of Carolingian Francia, were well-trained, well-respected, and well-compensated.

Roger Collins:

Bowman is very good at breaking down the distinctions between oral and documentary forms of evidence and between supposedly private and public elements in the administration of justice.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	v
PREFACE Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
ABBREVIATIONS Publicly Available Download PDF	xiii
INTRODUCTION Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
PART I. COURTS AND CODES
CHAPTER ONE. SICUT LEX EDOCET: REMEMBERING AND FORGETTING THE WRITTEN LAW Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	33
CHAPTER TWO. DO NEO-ROMANS CURSE? LAND, LAW, AND RITUAL Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	56
CHAPTER THREE. DILIGITE IUSTITIAM QJJI IUDICATIS TERRAM: JUDGES IN COURT AND SOCIETY Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	81
CHAPTER FOUR. COURTS AND THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	100
PART II: PROOFS AND STRATEGIES
CHAPTER FIVE. COLD CAULDRONS AND THE SMOLDERING HAND: THE JUDICIAL ORDEAL Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	119
CHAPTER SIX. FIGHTING WITH WRITTEN RECORDS Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	141
CHAPTER SEVEN. COMMUNITY, MEMORY, AND PROOF: THE PLACE OF WITNESS TESTIMONY Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	165
PART III. ENDINGS AND CONTEXTS
CHAPTER EIGHT. WINNING, LOSING, AND RESISTING: HOW DISPUTES ENDED Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	185
CHAPTER NINE. JUSTICE AND VIOLENCE IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	211
INDEX Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	275

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Audience: General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 304
Illustrations
- Other: 2 maps, 2 halftones
Keywords: Legal History & Studies; Medieval & Renaissance Studies

eBook

Published: October 18, 2018
ISBN: 9781501721045