How can one imagine to be fully aware of all major developments in a scholarly discipline? The fleet of websites, blogs and social media accounts relevant to your field can become almost too large. Using another metaphor, you might not be able to see the new trees in the forest! In December 2025 I bumped into to the results of a project which I certainly had spotted in 2023. Only now I realized a hybrid event around it was already held this summer. The crucial thing is noting this project offers more than a new handbook.
The FONTES project hosted by the Jagiellonian University in Kraków is a truly European project. Apart from a handbook in French, Lire le droit au Moyen Âge. Comprendre et utiliser les sources juridiques (XIIe-XVe siècles), edited by Emanuele Conte and Louis Genton (Palermo-Florence, 2025) there is a subdomain of the publishing company with a web version of this handbook. The project website will lead you also to podcasts and video lectures, and to an overview of external resources. In this post I will look at this constellation of resources which in my view indeed enrich the study of legal history for the European Middle Ages.
Sources and context
The hybrid event held at Guyancourt on the afternoon of July 4, 2025 would have been a perfect opportunity to get acquainted with the editors and a number of contributors to Lire le droit. It is certainly not too late to look here at the project website and the book.
The FONTES project has a long title, FOstering iNnovative Teaching in the use of European legal Sources, lending itself luckily for the creation of an acronym. Scholars from four institutions, the Università degli Studi di Palermo, the Université de Genève, the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, and the EHESS in Paris developed between 2022 and 2024 this project with funding from an ERC grant. A number of Polish and Swiss institutions supported the project, too. When you read the team information you will note the support from the University of Edinburgh. From other universities cmae cotributions, too, as from Rosalba Sorice (Università di Catania), Sarah White (Un iversity of Nottingham) and Raphaël Eckert (Université de Strasbourg).
It is my intention not just to look at the book in print and its virtual version, but also at the materials presented at the FONTES website. A first reason for this choice is the fact the handbook is in French, but the podcasts and lectures mostly in English. If you insist on reading you might want to look at the 100-page PDF of the training curriculum for the courses held in Paris in 2023 and in Palermo in 2024. You can view in the section introducing the sources of the European us commune the videos of twelve lectures, test your understanding by giving answers to a checklist with multiple choice questions, and look at five tutorials dealing with specific authorative legal texts.
The main objective of the FONTES project is to bridge tha gaps and bias in understanding legal history for lawyers and historians. Both disciplines have their qualities, but also tendencies to overlook or misunderstand matters or to interpret things too narrow or plainly wrong. The ugly thing would be not being aware of such risks or outright shortcomings. Hence these courses at two levels and the book deal both with legal matters and with legal sources as historical artefacts with their own characteristics. One of the great strengths is the attention in two lectures (11 and 12) to reading and understanding legal manuscripts. The first section for educational output leads you to three courses originally available as part of the courses made available by the Copernicus College of the Jagiellonian University, to a short interesting interview with Gero Dolezalek, and to the Polish IURA portal.
Apart from the aim to foster the study of the European ius commune a series of lectures is devoted to Swiss legal sources and diplomatic treaties, and a similar, even longer course to legal sources for the history of :Poland and the Grand-Duchy of Lithuania. Both courses are most valuable in itself, they serve also to put the iura propria in connection to the ius commune, and they bring you also into the Early Modern period.
Documentation for the Paris and Palermo intensive courses can also be found at the project website. The fact the information here is often in English is something to bear in mind when looking at the book. Thus the project website definitely supports the French handbook. In order to avoid doublures I will skip both courses here.
You certainly should have a look at the range of external resources presented at the FONTES website. In fact the team goes way beyond offering just link lists and book titles. The links are given with explanations and recommendations, often in a running narrative. There are bibliographic hints for several countries. In my view it is most useful to bookmark this part of the project website.
A handbook in four connected parts
When I first saw the online version of the handbook and looked at its structure and contents I immediately said to myself how much I would have loved to have at hand this work when I started studying legal history. Themes and subjects are presented in a coherent way, and this helps you to avoid going too quickly to the subject(s) you prefer. You need the context to understand medieval law systems and their development. The presentation of Roman law next to canon law, customary law and (royal) legislation is refreshing and much needed.
The first section, Théorie, typologie et matérialités du droit, has six chapters. Paolo Napoli discusses legal normativity and social normativity. Beatrice Pasciuta and Guido Rossi present a typology of medieval legal souces. The codicology of legal manuscripts is the subject of the chapter by Joanna Franska. Gero Dolezalek discusses reading and understanding twelfth-century manuscripts of the Corpus Iuris Civilis. Maria Cerrito and Anna Floris write about the palaeography of juridical manuscripts. Kacper Górski and Maciej Mikuła end this section with a contribution on medieval legal sources and digital resources. Thus this handbook does help you substantially to start studying medieval legal manuscript sources.
The typology of legal sources, not to be confused with the doctrine of the hierarchy of legal sources, is a subject which interested me already thirty years ago in my very first article. Pasciuta and Rossi rightly warn for viewing a typology of sources as a purely objective matter. They suggest to group sources in three domains, normative sources, doctrinal sources and sources from legal practice. The paragraph on the last domain is a bit short, but for the rest the authors succeed in giving attention to Roman and canon law, legislation and even merchant law. A well-chosen concise bibliography and a series of comprehension questions help you to read this chapter actively with guidance for further study.
The second section of Lire le droit deals in six chapters with the ius commune and its sources. Raphaël Eckert opens with a chapter on the sources and literature of medieval canon law. Already placing this subject at the start is most welcome. Marie Bassano has written a similar chapter for the sources and literature of medieval Roman law. In her contribution Rosalba Sorice focuses on the actual place and role of canon law within the ius commune in summae and commentaries. Silvia Di Paolo writes about the renewal of medieval ecclesiastical law, the role of legal cases and the development of the power to legislate for the medieval church. Attilio Stella is indeed the author you would trust to contribute a chapter on the development of the Libri Feudorum from local law in Lombardy into an integral element of the ius commune.
David de Concilio concludes this section with a contribution on a matter rarely mentioned in this way in textbooks on medieval legal doctrine, the rhetorical and dialectic sources of medieval law. His chapter, illustrated with some images of legal manuscripts, helps you to see the origin and value of textual genres such as distinctiones, the various kinds of quaestiones, brocarda and argumenta.
In a way the third part concerning the role of legislation by new powers between 1200 and 1500 is perhaps the most novel element in this handbook. Corinne Leveleux-Teixeira looks in some detail at changing views of legislation for establishing norms during the thirteenth century. She urges readers to avoid anachronistic views of legislation and norms. Florent Garnier writes on French royal legislation. Maria Cerrito and Beatrice Pasciuta contribute a chapter on legislation in Sicily. The Sieta Partidas are the theme of a chapter by Jesus Velasco. Sandro Notari is the author of a chapter on the statutes of Italian communes. Kacper Górski and Maciej Mikuła figure here with a contribution on legislation in central Europe, focusing on the Polish Diet. Public law is shown in this section as a most substantial element of medieval law and justice. Bringing Eastern Europe into view when studying the ius commune is surely another gain.
The fourth and final part of this handbook creates in four chapters space for legal practices and law in actual life. Noëlle-Laetitia Perret and Adrien Wyssbrod open with a general chapter on sources from legal practices as windows on the interaction between theory and practice. Massimo Vallerani writes a chapter on legal order and procedural law with a focus on Italy and in particular Bologna from 1100 to 1300. Sarah White has been given the subject of legal pleading in the thirteenth century. Editor Louis Genton closes this section with a chapter on legal texts and writings on legal practice. He strongly urges readers to note the fluid borders between genres, and to value the interplay between the learned law and the practices of law in daily life.
In her chapter on legal pleading Sarah White brings you to the source genre of the ordines and the role of oral argument in courts. She discusses rhetorical manuals and she illustrates the importance of rhetoric in a discussion of two quaestiones which use the same allegationes, legal references, for a different point of view.
Genton created also a useful overview of medieval lawyers and their coverage in the main online repertory for them, the authority data of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, and the entries in online biographical dictionaries such as the Dizionario Bibiografico degli Italiani. Just showing the different spellings of names reminds you to search diligently for information about them. Of course it is possible to spot some missing jurists, but for some three hundred lawyers this overview is most helpful.
For students and scholars
My lengthy presentation of this handbook has a very valid motivation: This work helps students so much to advanced study levels that not only they, but their teachers and research scholars, too, will want to have and use this book for guidance in their own research and teaching. The editors and contributors of Lire le droit view the study of medieval legal phenomena as not just a matter of knowing how to discuss medieval legal texts and legal cases for their own sake. The podcast with Emanuel Conte and John Hudson states explicitly one of the main objectives of the book, and I urge you to listen to them yourself.
Studying the sources is not just a paradigm of legal history, a kind of holy grail in this book. It is one of the constitutive elements in grappling with the diversity of sources, legal systems and views on the interaction between law, theories, social history and institutions. The material culture of medieval lawyers comes into view by looking at their manuscripts, by studying how the learned law interacted with other legal source genres. Conte, Genton and their scholarly équipe want students to immerse themselves in medieval legal history to help them view the contexts of law and justice. Their subject must be studied in a way in vivo, not only in vitro as a kind of mental interplay between printed texts.
Lire le droit is to some extent certainly the opposite of the textbook edited by Osvaldo Cavallar and Julius Kirshner, Jurists and Jurisprudence in Medieval Italy. Texts and Contexts (Toronto-Buffalo-London 2020). This book was criticised in some corners for the almost exclusive presentation of sources in translation. However, with among these translations some twenty consilia, legal consultations, they succeeded in bringing law and society into view together. The book enables students without any background or basic training in historical auxiliary sciences to come fairly close to the world of lawyers and law in medieval Italy. Cavallar and Kirshner contributed to an issue of Reti Medievali Rivista 22/2 (2021) with four articles about their book to comment at length on their purpose, preparation and teaching experience. In particular their thoughts about the tradition of needing knowledge of several languages to study medieval history and law makes you pause for thought.
You might have problems with the fact the handbook edited by Conte and Genton scarcely touches Germany, England, the Low Countries and the Scandinavian countries. In my view this does not diminish the value and the example itself of Lire le droit. Scholars can feel very much invited to create a team willing to conceive and write a similar book for these countries. A number of sometimes classic introductions to their legal history exist for these countries. It will be certainly illuminating to make them the subject of a text book with a comparative view showing whenever possible their shared legal history.
In the short interview with Gero Dolezalek you can find valuable advice for starting to study legal history and wrestling with original sources. It will imbue you with other perspectives to set you free from the prejudices and customs of your own mother discipline. Of course some elements of getting to know your sources will involve hard study and long practice, preferably helped by teachers with an open mind, preferably together with others sharing the hardship of tackling difficulties and the joy of at last becoming able to see and decide yourself. Lawyers, historians, palaeographers, theologians, linguists and whoever is curious about medieval legL history benefit from combining their forces to include the study of medieval law as part and parcel of medieval studies at large. It will not be easy, but you will learn together for your shared benefit.
Emanuele Conte and Louis Genton (eds.), Lire le droit au Moyen Âge. Comprendre et utiliser les sources juridiques (XIIe-XVe siècles) (Florence-Palermo 2025; xxi, 506 pp.; ISBN 9788868899493) - online version and project website
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