Judicial Practices and their Sources in Northwest Iberia in the 10th Century

  • Bernardo Cañon Dunner Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Keywords: Judicial Practices, Judicial Sources, Documentation, Typology, Ambiguity, Primitivism

Abstract

Regarding the different diplomatic forms and types containing judicial traces in the Northwest Hispanic world between the 9th and 11th centuries, we face a complex panorama, partly difficult to understand when trying to name such sources. This complexity has been commonly explained as primitivism or a lack of development of legal and diplomatic elements. This paper is concerned with new ways of coping with possible explanations to this complexity, while pointing to a different reading which avoids any negative presumptions on the lines of supposed primitivism. In this way, we shall try to read these sources in connection to the study of judicial practices, and within a wider interpretation of literacy in the high medieval society, while leading the questions to other dimensions beyond the written word and diverting the hegemony that it has in the construction of judicial realities.

View citations

Crossmark

Metrics

Published
2016-01-01
How to Cite
Cañon Dunner, Bernardo. 2016. “Judicial Practices and their Sources in Northwest Iberia in the 10th Century”. De Medio Aevo 5, nº 2:: 37-60. https://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/DMAE/article/view/75760
Section
Miscellany