Law as something remembered
Modern readers tend to imagine law as a book of statutes. For much of the Middle Ages, that is not how it worked. Law was largely custom: the accepted way of settling disputes and handling wrongs in a particular community, remembered and declared by those who knew it. In many places the idea was that law was found rather than made, and a ruler’s role was to uphold it.
Custom was not unchangeable. It shifted as courts decided cases and communities adapted, and rulers could add to it. But because it was usually local, the rules for the same offense could differ from one lordship or town to the next.
Written codes in the early Middle Ages
After the Roman Empire’s western provinces broke up, new kingdoms wrote down the traditions of their peoples, often in Latin and often influenced by Roman habits of record-keeping. Well-known examples include the Salic law of the Franks and laws of the Lombards, Visigoths, Burgundians and Anglo-Saxon kings. Many of these codes list injuries and the payments due for them, reflecting a system of compensation.
These were not complete legal systems. They record certain rules, often those that had become contested, and leave out much that people simply knew. Some codes applied to the people of one group living within a kingdom, so that different laws could govern different residents, a principle sometimes called personal law, though how widely it was applied is debated.
Roman law and its revival
Roman legal ideas survived in various forms, in Italy and southern France especially. In the late eleventh and twelfth centuries, scholars, notably in Bologna, studied the Justinian code, the compilation of Roman law made under Emperor Justinian, intensively. Their work trained lawyers and administrators who spread Roman concepts across Europe. Roman law did not replace local custom in most places, but it became a source of method, vocabulary and argument, and in some regions courts used it directly when custom was silent. Rulers who wanted a more capable royal administration found it useful, since it supported strong central authority.
Canon law
The Church had its own law, called canon law, built from scripture, decisions of church councils, and papal rulings. In the mid-twelfth century, a teacher named Gratian compiled a very influential collection of texts, often dated to around 1140, which became the basis for study. Later popes added further decretals, or rulings.
Canon law governed clergy, church property and sacraments, and it dealt with marriage, wills and certain moral offenses for laypeople too. Its procedures were more systematic and more reliant on writing than many secular courts. They influenced procedure elsewhere, notably the move away from ordeals and toward examination of witnesses.
Regional differences
It is useful to compare a few regions, while remembering that each had many internal differences.
- England. After the Norman Conquest, royal justice expanded, and over time a body of rules known as common law developed from decisions of royal courts, hence “common” to the realm. Local custom and manorial law continued alongside it, and the Crown’s courts did not apply Roman law as freely as courts on the Continent.
- France. Customs varied greatly by region. Southern areas leaned toward Roman law, northern areas toward local customs. Some customs were written down by lawyers and officials, particularly from the thirteenth century onward.
- The German lands. Collections that recorded local law, such as the Sachsenspiegel of the early thirteenth century, were written by a private author rather than enacted by a ruler, which shows how custom could be set down by learned individuals.
- Italy. City governments issued their own statutes, and universities trained jurists who mixed Roman and canon law.
- Iceland. Law was recited and decided at an assembly, the Icelandic Althing, with a law-speaker who memorized it, showing a very different arrangement without a king.
Who decided what the law was
In many courts, the verdict-makers were not professional judges at all. In manorial or local courts, respected members of the community, sometimes called suitors, might declare what the custom was. In royal courts, trained officials grew more important over time. In church courts and in Roman-influenced regions, learned judges applied written texts.
Magna Carta in England is one famous case of nobles pressing a king to respect established law. Because of this, disagreements about what the law said were normal, and parties sometimes asked for the opinion of experienced people, or a higher court.
Law and power
Rulers did not simply apply law; they used it. By issuing ordinances, setting up courts and establishing procedures, kings extended their authority at the expense of local lords and of the Church. The balance of church and state was repeatedly disputed, and competing claims between secular and church jurisdictions caused repeated conflicts. The long-term trend in many places was toward more written law and more central control, though local custom persisted well beyond the Middle Ages.