Reflections on the Costuma d'Agen

Abstract

Reflections on the Costuma d'Agen Mary Jane Schenck As is true of his earlier translations of medieval customaries (in particular The Coutumes de Beauvaisis and the Etablissements de Saint Louis), Ron Akehurst's latest, the Costuma d'Agen, published by Brepols in 2010, is an invaluable resource for work on the law, especially for those who do not read Occitan. The following overview of the customary will touch on questions of its dating and the influence of Angevin and Occitan socio-political culture. The work challenges commonplace assumptions about contrasts in the law between north and south, customary or normative procedures; and it offers a blend of seigneurial, feudal, and urban laws. Not the least of its fascinating details pertain to women's social position with regard to the law. The dating of the Costuma is problematic because one must consider three different forms of law: oral customs, early written forms of those customs, and the specific compilation known as the Costuma d'Agen. According to Akehurst, it is a livre juratoire, or swearing copy, an illustrated manuscript (MS 43) still found in the archives at Agen, whose use is attested up until the Revolution (xii). The customary is generally conceded to have been written during the thirteenth century, but evidence for more precise dating is partial and can be used to support a broad time frame, from the late twelfth to the end of the thirteenth century. Based on a different customary, written by a notary at Agen in 1279, Akehurst conjectures that a written copy of the Costuma would have existed by then (xi). Others place the date to mid-century, but it could be much earlier. The question of when customs first passed into written form is illuminated by late twelfth century documents that refer to a lord having accepted certain customs or citizens swearing to uphold certain customs,1 if one assumes the customs themselves were already in written form at the time the lord agrees to them. In other words, a general climate of increasing literacy practices included documenting feudal concessions and the law. Other evidence is found in the wording of certain rules stated in late twelfth century charters that mirror the wording of the written customary. Based [End Page 16] on a reference in 1205 to a set of customs modeled on those of Agen, Paul Ourliac says the latter must have been written by that time (cited in Akehurst xiv). Since the region of Agen passed periodically under Plantagenet and Angevin rule, my sense is that the existence of charters from the last quarter of the twelfth century also indicates the time-frame for writing down customs, because of the influence of the sophisticated bureaucracy, expanded use of writs, and the proliferation of documentation in the Anglo-Norman world. I also assume that the reference to Henry in Chapter 3 as a former lord of the territory2 is a good indication that the customary of Agen falls between the late twelfth century and the battle of Bouvines (1214) because reference to the Plantagenets might be impolitic after that, although the south remained independent of the French at least until 1229. As Akehurst points out, the name "Henri" was inked out later "presumably after one of the times the territory passed back into French hands" (xxi). Two other factors may offer contextual clues to dating. There are several references to good men of Agen being chosen for the council or as notaries, and one qualification is that they must not be heretics or "vaudois" (Chaps 33 and 42). The period of greatest concern about heresy in the south was the late twelfth century with the Pope's repeated calls for the counts of Toulouse to act against them, and during the Albigensian crusades (1209-1229). After this period, the heretics might have been suppressed well enough not to warrant the concern; on the other hand, inquisitions which began in the late twelfth century were extended by Lateran IV (1215), and continued to develop throughout the thirteenth. Another point may also suggest the later dating. In the Costuma (Chap 32) citizens of Agen are given the right to build bastides. These fortified...