This Blog is delighted to note the call for papers pasted in below. It focuses on a particular topic of great importance in the history of law and western European culture. The Projet Volterra which is sponsoring these panels has recently turned (Volterra II) to examination of Roman law in the early Middle Ages

CALL FOR PAPERS at LEEDS IMC 6-9 July, 2015 “The Roman legal heritage between continuity and reformation in the tenth and eleventh centuries”

During the eleventh century there was an explosion of interest in and use of Roman law and the Justinianic codification, which led in due course to the establishment of a pre-eminent law school at Bologna and the canonization of the Vulgate text in the twelfth century. How and why this happened when and where it did, and what was the nature of the existing legal and intellectual world out of which this could occur are key questions of medieval scholarship.

The Volterra Roman law project at UCL seeks to sponsor a series of panels at the Leeds IMC 2015 on the theme of the Roman legal heritage on the cusp of this development in the tenth and eleventh centuries. We therefore invite proposals for papers on any aspect of Roman law and texts in these two centuries across western Europe. This can relate to:
the manuscript tradition of the Justinianic or Theodosian collections and their derivatives, or for any Roman legal texts surviving by other routes or means; the status of Roman law in canonical collections, whether by inclusion, direct or indirect, of texts or the underlying rules, or indeed their exclusion; the use or manipulation of Roman law in legal disputes or documents, whether in lay or ecclesiastical contexts; the use or manipulation of Roman law in lay legal collections or treatises; the existence or nature of legal expertise or specialization during this period.

Proposals for papers, with a title and 100-word abstract, should be sent to Simon Corcoran at s.corcoran@ucl.ac.uk by 12 September 2014.

Sep 2, 2014