Law or treaty? Defining the edge of legal studies in the early and high medieval periods
Jenny Benham, Project Officer 2009–11 at Early English Laws, now Norwich
In: Historical Research, Volume 86, Issue 233, pages 394–407, August 2013
DOI: 10.1111/1468-2281.12025

ABSTRACT:

The article is an attempt to define medieval treaties in their legal context, thereby re-aligning the medieval historiography with its modern counterpart, and to explore some of the textual and practical possibilities and problems of this context. It considers why some treaties in the early and high middle ages have been regarded as laws while others have not and argues that while the modern concept of international law is based on the three principles of treaties, practice and custom, and general principles of law (including canon or Roman law), medieval scholars have only looked to the latter principle, thereby disregarding the treaties themselves and the corresponding legal practice. Jenny Benham argues that medieval treaties belonged to the category laws.

The article is part of a collection of papers presented at a conference in Copenhagen in 2011 organised in collaboration between three digitisation projects: “Early English Law“, “Nordic Medieval Laws” and “Relmin”.

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Read also about the context of the article in “Medieval Law” in Medieval Histories