Medieval Legal Jurisdictions
Jurisdiction, Legal Community, and Political Discourse in Medieval Europe, 1050–1250
Funded by the British Academy’s Tackling the UK’s International Challenges Fund.
The central Middle Ages is often understood as a period when secular jurisdictions clashed not only with each other but also with their ecclesiastical counterparts, creating a legacy of jurisdictional distinctions and conflict which still resonates today.
Through the analytical lens of multi-legalism, this project re-examines the formation, interaction, and overlap of legal and governmental boundaries during this key period. The project has a dual aim of reconceptualising Europe’s multi-legal past (and how medieval litigants, lawmakers and legal commentators experienced it) for an academic audience and, through interventions in popular media outlets, of presenting this approach to a wider public.