Space in the Medieval West by Madeline Fanny; Cohen Meredith;

Author:Madeline, Fanny; Cohen, Meredith;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-09-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

Inventing Legal Space: From Regional Custom to Common Law in the Coutumiers of Medieval France

Ada-Maria Kuskowski

The language of geography and images of maps have long dominated our general understanding of French customary law in the high Middle Ages.1 Henri Klimrath established the first cartography of French medieval custom already in 1837 (see Map 7.1).2 The most important feature of this map was the famed fault-line that ran more or less from La Rochelle to Lake Geneva and divided the pays de coutumes, the areas of Northern France governed by custom, from the pays de droit écrit, the areas of Southern France with a Roman-influenced law.3

Klimrath had worked by deduction from the geographic indicators in the coutumiers and from the limits of the regional Parlements in pre-Revolutionary France. The problematic nature of this method is quite clear: custom, legal practice, and geographic boundaries had undergone some notable changes between the thirteenth and the eighteenth centuries.4 In the 1960s, Jean Yver adjusted this customary map for Northern France in his Géographie Coutumière, where he amended the territorial delimitation of the customs and gathered them into affiliated groups.5

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