Medieval Europe was a maze of overlapping and competing legal jurisdictions, where norms varied widely from region to region. Nevertheless, from the twelfth century onwards, lawyers also spoke of a ius commune or “common law” that transcended the laws peculiar to individual jurisdictions. This common law consisted of the great compilations of canon and Roman law and was the subject of instruction in the law faculties of all European universities until the seventeenth century. Because of the dominance of the English common law tradition in the former British Empire, the ius commune traditionally received little attention from Anglo-American scholars. The post-war period, however, witnessed an unprecedented influx of Anglophone scholars into the field, often with a view to exploiting juridical sources for insight into a wide range of historical phenomena. The objective of the Toronto Studies in Medieval Law series is to provide a venue for publication of English-language studies on the ius commune and the most recent scholarship in the field.
Series Editor: Lawrin Armstrong, University of Toronto
