Sacred Rules, Secular Revelations: The Conceptions of Rights in Pre-Modern Europe

Abstract

This paper outlines my approach to analysing conceptions of individual rights in the Middle Ages, particularly the so-called ‘twelfth-century renaissance’. This period witnessed an efflorescence in learning and culture, particularly as the schools of higher learning led development in the disciplines of law and theology. Examining Justinianic Roman law (i.e. Roman law received via the Emperor Justinian I’s codification in the early sixth century), canon law (i.e. church and ecclesiastical law), as well as theological sources, I am looking for the use of rights language and conceptions of individual rights. My point of departure is Brian Tierney's notion of individual rights in twelfth-century canon lawyers, but to extend this inquiry more broadly (beyond canonists) to include medieval Justinianic Roman law glossators and scholastic theologians. Within this line of inquiry, I am interested in the ‘lawyer-theologians’ of the twelfth century, particularly those in the Anglo-Norman context, whose writings evince an overriding practicality in their treatment of these issues.