Suchergebnisse

Introduction : legislation, custom, and the sources of early English law -- The old English penitentials and their reception -- Legal change, vernacular penitentials, and the chronology of old English prose -- The law of the estate : bishops, masters, and slaves -- The law of the household : marriage and sexuality -- Caring for the body : law, penitentials, and English "Sick-Maintenance" -- Caring for the mind : pollution and mental liability -- Conclusion : vernacular penitentials and secular lawmaking.

Alfred the Great's domboc ('book of laws') is the longest and most ambitious legal text of the Anglo-Saxon period. Alfred places his own laws, dealing with everything from sanctuary to feuding to the theft of bees, between a lengthy translation of legal passages from the Bible and the legislation of the West-Saxon King Ine (r. 688-726), which rival his own in length and scope. This book is the first critical edition of the domboc published in over a century, as well as a new translation. Five introductory chapters offer fresh insights into the laws of Alfred and Ine, considering their backgrounds, their relationship to early medieval legal culture, their manuscript evidence and their reception in later centuries. Rather than a haphazard accumulation of ordinances, the domboc is shown to issue from deep reflection on the nature of law itself, whose effects would permanently alter the development of early English legislation