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Medieval Law and the
Foundations of the State
Medieval Law
and the
Foundations of the State
ALAN HARDING
3
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP
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© Alan Harding 2001
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First published 2001
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Harding, Alan
Medieval law and the foundations of the state / Alan Harding.
p. cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Law, Medieval. 2. Law–Europe–History. 3. State, The–History. I. Title.
KJ147 .H37 2002
2001036406
ISBN 0-19-821958-X
13579108642
Typeset in Sabon
by Regent Typesetting, London
Printed in Great Britain
on acid-free paper by
T. J. International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall
340.5'5'094–dc21
Preface
T RACING the growth of the State has become something of an histor-
ical industry, but the subject still needs definition. The history of the
State has to be more than a history of strong government: it must show
how an abstraction, a piece of metaphysics, came to dominate political
consciousness as a thing not only believed to have real existence but
loved for its promise of social order and hated for its threat of coercion.
The power of the State rests on an idea which is unique in commanding
both the levels of political thought discerned by Charles Taylor: the
‘common-sense . . . pre-theoretical understanding of what is going on
among the members of society’ which is necessary for any political
activity, and the high theory of the philosophers who criticize and sys-
tematize these working notions.
1
Graffiti urge the smashing of the same
State about which Aquinas, Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Hegel theorized.
This book is primarily concerned with the ‘pre-theoretical under-
standing’ of what constituted a ‘state’ among rulers and ruled in the
middle ages. It is not a history of state-theory and therefore makes little
use of ‘the learned laws’, i.e. Roman and Canon Law, but an account of
the complex of procedures and institutions perceived as constituting ‘the
state of the realm’ in a medieval kingdom, and of how that perception
developed into the early modern idea of the State. The introductory
chapter does, however, seek to define the meaning of the word ‘state’ as
it has been used in political thought back to the middle ages, and finds
that its use in a theoretical way begins with Thomas Aquinas in
the later thirteenth century. The following chapters trace the growth of
systems of justice in the period before that time, when ideas of state
must be looked for in the legislation and written
acta
of kings and their
ministers. This is where ‘state’ appeared as part of a constellation of
‘constitutional’ words and notions, along with peace and custom, fief-
holding and liberty, statute and ‘the common good’. In the main part of
the book the sources are therefore the volumes of charters and laws in
such printed series as the
Monumenta Germaniae Historica
, the
Recueils des Actes
and
Ordonnances
of French rulers, the
Regesta
Regum Anglo-Normannorum
, and the English
Statutes of the Realm
,
along with the records of the administration of justice and the law-
books which summed up a country’s legal practice. The final chapters
1
C. Taylor, ‘Political theory and practice’, in
Social Theory and Political Practice
, ed. C.
Lloyd (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983).
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