The Limited Impact of the Usatges de Barcelona in Twelfth-Century Catalonia

Traditio ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 53-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam J. Kosto

The twelfth-century legal compilation known as the Usatges de Barcelona holds an important place in the history of Catalonia. Recognized as authoritative by kings and parliaments alike from at least the thirteenth century, the Usatges were integrated into the official collection of Catalan law commissioned by the Corts and the new king of Aragón, Fernando de Antequera, in 1412–13. The work of the jurists who carried out this task was eventually fixed in print (in Catalan) in 1495 as the Constitutions y altres drets de Cathalunya, which was reissued in 1588–89 and again in 1704. The Usatges thus formed part of the law of the region for over 500 years, until the suppression of Catalan local law in the Decreto de Nueva Planta of 1716; thereafter, they survived — and still survive — as a focus of Catalan nationalism and regional pride. For medieval historians, the Usatges usefully supplement Catalonia's abundant documentary evidence, evidence unaccompanied before the thirteenth century by significant narrative sources. Individual articles cover such diverse topics as composition payments for injuries, guidelines for judicial proceedings, inheritance rules, military obligation, the status of Jews and Muslims, marriage, rape, treason, and public highways. Drawn from and influenced by a wide variety of sources — including the Visigothic code, Roman law, comital charters, and royal decrees — they provide valuable information about legal traditions and reasoning in Catalonia.

2009 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Muhammad Aziz

This paper analyzes the historical conditions of Yemen’s Sufi movement from the beginning of Islam up to the rise of the Rasulid dynasty in the thirteenth century. This is a very difficult task, given the lack of adequate sources and sufficient academic attention in both the East and theWest. Certainly, a few sentences about the subject can be found scattered in Sufi literature at large, but a respectable study of the period’s mysticism can hardly be found.1 Thus, I will focus on the major authorities who first contributed to the ascetic movement’s development, discuss why a major decline of intellectual activities occurred in many metropolises, and if the existing ascetic conditions were transformed into mystical tendencies during the ninth century due to the alleged impact ofDhu’n-Nun al-Misri (d. 860). This is followed by a brief discussion ofwhat contributed to the revival of the country’s intellectual and economic activities. After that, I will attempt to portray the status of the major ascetics and prominent mystics credited with spreading and diffusing the so-called Islamic saintly miracles (karamat). The trademark of both ascetics and mystics across the centuries, this feature became more prevalent fromthe beginning of the twelfth century onward. I will conclude with a brief note on the most three celebrated figures of Yemen’s religious and cultural history: Abu al-Ghayth ibn Jamil (d. 1253) and his rival Ahmad ibn `Alwan (d. 1266) from the mountainous area, andMuhammad ibn `Ali al-`Alawi, known as al-Faqih al-Muqaddam (d. 1256), from Hadramawt.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-46
Author(s):  
Ishrat Alam

In the history of technology, the loom has come to occupy an important place. While the horizontal handloom has a comparatively simple mechanism, this is not true of the vertical drawloom, which through centuries has developed complex forms. The question of the latter’s presence in India in early times has aroused some controversy. The case is made in this article that it arrived in the thirteenth century from Iran but failed to supplant the handloom in most areas of textile production, except for carpet weaving, mainly in Kashmir.


Istoriya ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (9 (107)) ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Galina Popova

The article is devoted to the legal history of the lands of the Kingdom of Toledo in the first two hundred years after the Christian reconquest. The assimilation of the conquered lands by the new political power, preserving the border position, leads to the emergence of a special legal tradition, typical for other similar territories, which received the general name “extremadura” — “borderland”. The Fueros, created in the Kingdom of Toledo, from the very beginning, firmly linked the territorial and personal nature of the legal norms included in their texts. The formation of local legal traditions took place with the active participation of the local elite, which was reflected in the editing of Fuero texts. The inhabitants of Toledo were supposed to use the Visigothic "Liber iudiciorum" as a normative basis for legal proceedings, but at the same time maintained the legitimate possibility of resorting to norms of a different origin, the so-called “Fuero of Castilians”. The lack of a strict systematization in the legal framework of the proceedings was reflected in the organization of judicial officials in Toledo. The good preservation of the local act material allows us to consider in more detail the practical implementation of the legal norm in the process of judicial proceedings, recorded in Arabic in the protocol of the end of the 8th century.


2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 149
Author(s):  
Jacek Wiewiorowski

THE NATURAL SCIENCES IN THE SERVICE OF PLEADINGS IN CASES INVOLVING MINORS: REMARKS ON CTH 2.4.1 [A. 318/319] = C. 5.4.20)SummaryThe subject of this article is the status of juvenile persons in Roman law, as exemplified by one of the constitutions of Constantine the Great, CTh 2.4.1 [a. 318/319] = C. 5.40.2, fragments of which are preserved in Theodosius’ Code of 438, and in an abridged version in Justinian’s Code of 534. In the first part of the article the author analyses the extremely controversial issue of the identity of the constitution’s addressee. In the second part he discusses the content of this constitution and the premises for its issue in the light of the Constantinian legislation on family matters and the way it was later interpreted. The article’s third part is an attempt to apply the natural and social sciences to the question of minors and their personality, and the examination of this issue as regards CTh 2.4.1 [a. 318/319] = C. 5.40.2. The author takes into consideration the basic data on the status of minors in Roman law, in the subsequent history of European law, and in non-European cultures. He concludes by making a series of observations on the potential for the application of the natural sciences in the study of Roman law, which could serve to confirm the timeless and universal nature of some of the solutions it prescribed.


2009 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Muhammad Aziz

This paper analyzes the historical conditions of Yemen’s Sufi movement from the beginning of Islam up to the rise of the Rasulid dynasty in the thirteenth century. This is a very difficult task, given the lack of adequate sources and sufficient academic attention in both the East and theWest. Certainly, a few sentences about the subject can be found scattered in Sufi literature at large, but a respectable study of the period’s mysticism can hardly be found.1 Thus, I will focus on the major authorities who first contributed to the ascetic movement’s development, discuss why a major decline of intellectual activities occurred in many metropolises, and if the existing ascetic conditions were transformed into mystical tendencies during the ninth century due to the alleged impact ofDhu’n-Nun al-Misri (d. 860). This is followed by a brief discussion ofwhat contributed to the revival of the country’s intellectual and economic activities. After that, I will attempt to portray the status of the major ascetics and prominent mystics credited with spreading and diffusing the so-called Islamic saintly miracles (karamat). The trademark of both ascetics and mystics across the centuries, this feature became more prevalent fromthe beginning of the twelfth century onward. I will conclude with a brief note on the most three celebrated figures of Yemen’s religious and cultural history: Abu al-Ghayth ibn Jamil (d. 1253) and his rival Ahmad ibn `Alwan (d. 1266) from the mountainous area, andMuhammad ibn `Ali al-`Alawi, known as al-Faqih al-Muqaddam (d. 1256), from Hadramawt.


Traditio ◽  
1943 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 355-408 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gaines Post

By the end of the thirteenth century the royal writ of summons to Parliament usually specified that communities send representatives with “full power” to consent to whatever should be ordained by the king in his court and council. This “full power” was the famous plena potestas which was stated in the mandates carried by knights and burgesses to Parliament and by delegates of cities and towns to Cortes and States General, and which is still current in proxies for stockholders' meetings. It has, of course, like almost every word of the terminology in documents relating to representation, challenged interpretation: on the one side is the argument of J. G. Edwards, who confines himself to England, that plena potestas implied an almost political or sovereign consent which limited the royal authority; on the other, the assumption that it was an expression of involuntary consent to the acts and decisions of the royal government. In general, of course, whatever modern scholars have decided as to the right of consent has resulted either from modern conceptions of representation or from a strict interpretation of the terminology in the sources for the history of assemblies. No one has examined plena potestas in the light of the legal theory and procedure of the thirteenth century It is possible that by studying how legists and canonists viewed the meaning of plena potestas—for it, like most of the terminology in the mandate, came from Roman Law—we can find at least a relatively new approach to the problem of medieval consent.


2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-89
Author(s):  
Babette S. Hellemans

This article proposes to describe the oxymoronic aspect of twelfth-century ascetic life, as it is couched in the semantics of marital ‘love-talk.’ By extending Christian asceticism to the field of marital semantics, I hope to come closer to a more intellectual kind of spirituality, situated in the philosophical discourse of the ars dialectica. While it is commonplace to state that affective speech in the twelfth century is a constitutive element of Western ‘spirituality’—up to the point that this period is sometimes credited with being the founder of an individual love-talk—the nature of a ‘matrimonial’ love-speech firmly located within monastic walls is far from self-evident. Furthermore, there is the issue of physical desire in both Christian worship (hymns, liturgy) and reflective, religious language. This ‘incarnation’ of love inside the history of Christianity was coined by the twelfth-century reformer and intellectual Bernard of Clairvaux in the most tangible terms possible, especially in his Sermons on the Song of Songs and in his devotional texts on Mary. However, it is not a broad claim with regard to the status of ‘spirituality’ within history that dominates the present article. If anything, this contribution could be characterized as exploring the opposite of the common semantics of spirituality: the argumentative and dialectical speech on the one hand and the fragility of poetry on the other, glooming beneath the surface of a meandering Christian tradition. My analysis of the work of Peter Abelard (1079–1142)—a fierce opponent of Bernard—will demonstrate a rather radical view of ‘spirituality’ as a sometimes veiled (integementum) and sometimes shattered specimen of medieval love-talk.


Author(s):  
Svitlana Hretsa

The article highlights the legal aspects of using the tax lien as a means to ensure the constitutional obligation to pay taxes andfees. The focus is on the importance of proper implementation of constitutional obligations for the protection of human rights and theperformance of state functions. An important place for tax liability in the system of constitutional obligations has been identified. Themain ways of ensuring the fulfillment of the tax obligation have been revealed and the key role of such a way as tax lien has beenemphasized. The concept of tax lien is defined and the history of formation of this institution in the legislation of Ukraine is revealed.The grounds for the emergence of the right of tax lien, the peculiarities of its documentation (registration) is presented. The status andpowers of the tax manager about the description of the property in the tax lien, checks of its condition, etc. are determined. The articledescribes the legal consequences of non-compliance with the legal requirements of the tax manager, in particular the suspension in courtof expenditure transactions on bank accounts, and in some cases - the use of administrative seizure of property. The author disclosesthe legal regime of property that is in tax lien, the scope of taxpayers’ rights to use it, the content of legislative restrictions on the possibilityof disposing of such property, the procedure for coordinating transactions with mortgage assets. The legal grounds for terminationof the right of tax lien are indicated. The legal mechanism of realization of the right of the tax pledge, the order and sequence ofthe address of collecting on the pledged property is described. The author revealed the shortcomings of the legislation, in particular thelong nature of the recovery in court. Proposals have been made to improve the legal regulation of the tax lien to increase the effectivenessof this instrument to ensure proper implementation of the constitutional obligation to pay taxes. In particular, it is proposed to providethe possibility of extrajudicial recovery of property that is in tax lien when the taxpayer has given written consent.


Author(s):  
Thomas J. McSweeney

Priests of the Law tells the story of the first people in the history of the common law to think of themselves as legal professionals: the group of justices who wrote the celebrated treatise known as Bracton. It offers a new interpretation of Bracton and its authors. Bracton was not so much an attempt to explain or reform the early common law as it was an attempt to establish the status and authority of the king’s justices. The justices who wrote it were some of the first people to work full-time in England’s royal courts, at a time when they had no obvious model for the legal professional. They found one in an unexpected place: the Roman-law tradition that was sweeping across Europe in the thirteenth century. They modeled themselves on the jurists of Roman law who were teaching in Italy and France. In Bracton and other texts they produced, the justices of the royal courts worked hard to establish that the nascent common-law tradition was just one constituent part of the Roman-law tradition. Through their writing, this small group of people, working in the courts of an island realm, imagined themselves to be part of a broader European legal culture. They made the case that they were not merely servants of the king. They were priests of the law.


2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-74
Author(s):  
C. Philipp E. Nothaft

The Liber theoreumacie is a neglected work of practical geometry, written in Strasbourg in 1214, which sheds valuable light on the study and practice of astronomy in early thirteenth-century Europe. In this article, I focus on the first two chapters of Book IV, which both deal with the construction of horary instruments. The first of these chapters contains the earliest known account of the type of universal horary quadrant known as quadrans vetus, which is here given a biblical pedigree by labelling it the “sundial of Ahaz.” The second chapter describes a graphical method of inscribing hour markings on the surface of an astrolabe’s alidade, which appears to have been introduced into Latin Europe by the twelfth-century translator John of Seville. A critical edition and translation of the relevant passages will conclude the article.


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