Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of abbreviations
- 1 The early Middle Ages: a comparative approach
- 2 A historical and institutional profile of the Roman empire in the fourth and fifth centuries
- 3 Excursus I: ‘Barbarians’
- 4 Historical and institutional profiles of the ‘new dominations’
- 5 Excursus II : The days of the week
- 6 Excursus III: Anglo-Saxon charters
- 7 Consensus by assembly
- 8 Excursus IV: Authority and consensus in judicial decisions
- 9 Public allegiance
- 10 Excursus V: The Anglo-Saxon writ
- 11 Private allegiance
- 12 Open legal systems
- 13 Excursus VI: Textual ‘coincidences’ in documentary forms
- Chronology of popes and sovereigns
- Appendix of sources
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - Excursus III: Anglo-Saxon charters
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 February 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of abbreviations
- 1 The early Middle Ages: a comparative approach
- 2 A historical and institutional profile of the Roman empire in the fourth and fifth centuries
- 3 Excursus I: ‘Barbarians’
- 4 Historical and institutional profiles of the ‘new dominations’
- 5 Excursus II : The days of the week
- 6 Excursus III: Anglo-Saxon charters
- 7 Consensus by assembly
- 8 Excursus IV: Authority and consensus in judicial decisions
- 9 Public allegiance
- 10 Excursus V: The Anglo-Saxon writ
- 11 Private allegiance
- 12 Open legal systems
- 13 Excursus VI: Textual ‘coincidences’ in documentary forms
- Chronology of popes and sovereigns
- Appendix of sources
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The scope of this excursus
As many historians have pointed out, Latin was a foreign language in the British Isles, and in consequence, scholars there paid punctilious attention to the rules of grammar and syntax and, even more, to the classical linguistic and cultural tradition - with the further consequence that the early medieval Latin of the Anglo-Saxons and Celts was much less corrupt than that of Romance speakers.
In the chapters that follow I shall argue that something similar happened with regard to the introduction of the principia and regulae of European common law into Anglo-Saxon England. Although these imports did not find spontaneous acceptance among the population, they rapidly established themselves by virtue of their close connection with the legal practices of the Church and, obviously, because of their similar frame of cultural reference.
The following analysis omits Ireland because, as I have frequently pointed out, there was never any early medieval Irish kingdom capable of offering access to the European common law via the mechanisms that operated in the rest of Europe. I have also omitted Wales, where no such kingdom came into existence until after the end of our period. Scotland, too, is excluded, for it did not achieve political unity until the eve of the Norman Conquest.
The Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of the ninth century, and the kingdom of Wessex which subsequently dominated the whole country, frequently offered a favourable environment for the study of classical Latin and even Greek texts. This was no doubt fostered by the preferential channel of communication established with Spain in the sixth century, and certainly by communication with Ireland in the seventh.
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- The Origins of the European Legal Order , pp. 145 - 172Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000
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