The Norms of Roman Law and the Concept of Jurisdiction in the French Coutumiers of the 13th Century

The article is devoted to the analysis of the earliest North French collections of customary law of the 13th century: the “Coutume de Touraine-Anjou”, the “Usage d’Orlenois”, the “Conseil à un ami” of Pierre de Fontaines and the “Livre de jostice et de plet”. These codes practically did not attract the attention of modern researchers, but they differ in one curious feature: they have an impressive number of borrowings from the Roman law, or rather from the legislation of Justinian (483—565). The main task of the article was an attempt to understand what purpose these inserts served, how the authors and the compilers of the coutumiers worked with this material and, finally, what relation the Roman legal norms had to the territory to which the customary law of a particular area of the French Kingdom applied. According to the author of the article, the references to Roman law appeared in the texts of the Northern French coutumiers precisely because these latter were compiled during the grandiose judicial transformations of Louis IX the Saint and served primarily to settle the relations of the crown with local lords in the sphere of jurisdiction. The norms of the Roman law not only filled in the gaps in the knowledge of the lawyers of the 13th century regarding local legal customs, they also turned out to be extremely useful in order to build a clear “vertical of power” in the French Kingdom, which was entering the era of genuine centralization.

Saint Louis and the Jochids

Research objectives: To provide an analysis of the relations between the Jochids and the French monarch, Louis IX. Particular attention is dedicated to the channels used by the Tatars to obtain information about the political conditions in Western Europe. Research materials: Contemporary Western sources including the report of the Franciscan traveler, William of Rubruck, and German chronicles in which Berke’s embassy to the French king in 1260 has been recorded. Results and novelty of the study: The Tatar view of Medieval Europe is an insufficiently researched topic. In the decades that followed the Mongol invasion of Central Europe in 1241–1242, the accounts of Western travelers and chroniclers remain the sole material from which glimpses of the Jochid perspective of the Western world may be discerned. Nonetheless, fragmentary sources at our disposal reveal that the Jochids used Western travelers and envoys to learn more about the Christendom. In this way, the image of Louis IX as the leader of the Christian world was firmly entrenched among the Jochids by the early second half of the thirteenth century. It is attested by Berke’s mission sent to Paris in 1260, and also by testimony of William of Rubruck, recorded several years earlier. According to the Flemish Franciscan author, Batu’s son Sartak, who regarded Louis IX to be “the chief ruler among the Franks”, had heard about the French king from an earlier envoy from Constantinople, Baldwin of Hainaut. The report of Rubruck and other sources at our disposal indicate the importance of the rather neglected Jochid relations with the Latin empire of Constantinople as a channel through which the Tatars gathered valuable reports about the political conditions in the West.