The Matter of Personae in Medieval Italy

Abstract

Abstract This article hunts for the medieval understanding of juridical persona in the courtrooms of communal Italy (c.1250–1450). While corporate personae have been the long-favored subject of inquiry for both medieval and modern scholars, the ontological predecessor of the corporate persona, the juridical persona, remains undertheorized. The gap is surprising given that (i) the concept is central to other formative legal notions of standing, status, and identity and (ii) medieval legal practice’s erstwhile penchant was to gloss and re-gloss every word of its central texts. By considering cases of gestural blasphemy brought before both civic and ecclesiastical courts, this article discovers the multiple and context-specific meanings for persona at law. These shifting definitions hover around a theological impossibility: a material quality to divine persons that could render them subject to injury and defendable in court. I contend that the legal utility of the term persona rested in its ability to bridge conceptual gaps like that created in the prosecution of blasphemy. Persona was left definitionally both one and many for good legal reason.