Law | Book | Culture in the Early and High Middle Ages

Call for Submissions

for an edited collection

Law | Book | Culture in the Early and High Middle Ages

Edited by Thomas Gobbitt, PhD,

Institut für Mittelalterforschung, Austrian Academy of Sciences (OeAW), Vienna, Austria

Article submissions are invited for an edited collection focusing on the cultural contexts of medieval manuscripts containing laws and related texts. The moments when laws and related texts were first written have often been prioritised over the subsequent dissemination, emendation, transmission and reception of their later copies. However, rather than relegating later textual witnesses as passive and often flawed copies, modern scholarship has turned to seeing each manuscript witness of a text within the contexts of its production, and as an active, equally authoritative expression of the agency of the scribes and readers in the community for which the book was produced.

We are particularly interested in contributions addressing scribal strategies and the production and use of legal documents and books of medieval law. Contributors may focus on a wide range of medieval legal texts, such as ‘barbarian’ and royal law-codes, capitularies, Canon, Roman, Civil or Common Law, treaties, formularies, charters and cartularies, as well as related works of medieval legal scholarship such as commentaries and sample pleas.

We are especially interested in interdisciplinary and transcultural medieval studies, as well as those that incorporate the disciplines of history of the law, history of the book, codicology, palaeography, diplomatics, literature, linguistics, law, legal history, history, sociology, archaeology, folklore, theology, art history, and material culture. 

Abstracts of 250-500 words for proposed articles of 7,000 to 10,000 words, including references, should be sent to thomas.gobbitt@assoc.oeaw.ac.at for consideration by 31 Dec. 2015. This volume is under consideration for the series Explorations in Medieval Culture (Brill).