Law, Marriage, and Society in the Later Middle Ages: Arguments about Marriage in Five Courts

This is a study of marriage litigation in the archiepiscopal court of York (1300-1500) and the episcopal courts of Ely (1374-1381), Paris (1384-1387), Cambrai (1438-1453), and Brussels (1448-1459). All these courts were, for the most part, correctly applying the late medieval canon law of marriage, but statistical analysis of the cases and results confirms that there were substantial differences both in the types of cases the courts heard and the results they reached. Extensive additional material--over 300 pages--can be found on the Cambridge University Press website (www.cambridge.org/9780521877282) in the Resources and Solutions section under the heading Text and Commentary. This additional material includes Latin quotations from cases, discussions of alternative interpretations, references to primary sources that support the argument and references to the literature on the cases.

Author: Charles Donahue Jr
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 03/17/2008
Pages: 694
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 2.40lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.20w x 1.80d
ISBN: 9780521877282

About the Author
Donahue Jr, Charles: - Charles Donahue, Jr., is the Paul A. Freund Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and president of the American Society of Legal History until December 2007. Among other books, he is the coauthor or coeditor of Select Cases of the Ecclesiastical Courts of the Province of Canterbury, c. 1200-1301; Year Books of Richard II: 6 Richard II, 1382-1383; The Records of the Medieval Ecclesiastical Courts, and Cases and Materials on Property: An Introduction to the Concept and the Institution. He is also the author of more than seventy articles in the fields of ancient, medieval, and early modern legal history. Donahue teaches legal history in both the Law School and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard and has taught at the University of Michigan, the London School of Economics, the Vrije Universiteit te Brussel, Columbia University, the University of California at Berkeley, Boston College, and Cornell University. Donahue is vice-president and literary director of the Ames Foundation and a councillor of the Selden Society (UK). He is a life member of the American Law Institute and the Medieval Academy of America, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and a previous Guggenheim Fellow.