Introduction

Abstract

Introduction Sarah-Grace Heller This collection of essays is offered in tribute to F. R. P. "Ron" Akehurst and his lifetime of contributions to medieval Occitan studies. The articles were originally presented at a session of the Société Guilhem IX entitled "Law and Life in Medieval Occitania" at the 44th International Medieval Congress at Kalamazoo in May 2009, to celebrate and reflect upon the publication of his book, The Costuma d'Agen: A Thirteenth-Century Customary Compilation in Old Occitan transcribed from the Livre Juratoire. As these essays in Tenso demonstrate, the edition and translation of the Livre juratoire manuscript of the Costuma d'Agen represents a significant contribution to several fields of scholarship. This Occitan customary's very existence runs counter to the commonplace holding that northern France was the land of custom law, while the south held to Roman law. Mary Jane Schenck's article compares the Costuma with law codes from the French and Anglo-Norman contexts, placing it in the context of recent developments in medieval law studies, and particularly the question of the north-south legal divide. Marisa Galvez compares the Costuma with the customary of Toulouse, and then contrasts both with the fourteenth-century codification of the poetic rules known as the Leys d'Amor, arguing that the Leys deliberately calques such municipal law codes. Eliza Ghil and Angelica Rieger likewise demonstrate that law enriched the lyric lexicon, providing images of hierarchy, punishment, obligation, and control. Legal texts such as the Costuma provide examples of Occitan prose, helpful to linguists and philologists, such as Ron himself in his work with Peter Ricketts and others on the electronic Concordance de l'Occitan Mediévale (COM) project (Ricketts et al., 2001 and 2005). The edition puts the text into codicological context, as well. Akehurst's presentation of the Livre juratoire, with an essay on the manuscript by Alison Stones, highlights the book itself: this was Agen's municipal swearing copy, with illuminations rubbed by the repeated gestures of oath-making from the thirteenth century possibly up to the Revolution. Rieger's article features two of its [End Page 1] images, comparing them with miniatures and metaphors from lyric texts. Legal texts provide insight into the social context, of benefit to scholars from both the historical and poetic ends of the spectrum. As Akehurst notes in his introduction, customaries all have their bias, which can impart significant revelations regarding the preoccupations of those recording the law. In contrast with the law of the Orléanais in part II of the Etablissements de Saint Louis, which deals with establishing royal jurisdiction, the Agen text asserts the power of the city council, particularly in the face of several changes in lordship (Akehurst 2010, xxvi). It is "practical law," as Akehurst puts it, devoting attention to the salt and wine trade, weights and measures, property transactions, and floating mills. It says little about criminal law, or legal procedure. As Galvez observes, it takes little notice of ecclesiastical jurisdiction or canon law. According to one of Akehurst's favorite legal adages, "law is born old": it reacts to specific situations. There is normally little need to spend time and resources legislating infinite hypothetical possibilities, or likewise those things that are running smoothly enough on their own. If chapter 20 expands at some length on how "it is not reasonable for any man to be closed up in someone else's house at night," or even in the day if he is forbidden entry, it is probably because strife arose due to some man being closed up in someone's house at one point in Agen. The council seeks to prevent murders and thefts and "evil deeds (laghs faghs) that could ensue," which suggests attempting to prevent hypothetical outcomes to a real incident. The law code operates at the general level, suspended between an unmentioned specific past and the futures the jurists were expected to make safer. We cannot know exactly what happened, only the anxieties provoked. But those are nonetheless worthy of interest. Akehurst's introduction is succinct and brief, but it bears the wisdom of the foremost expert on French customary law, and that of a scholar familiar with...