In the last months I have started analysing a core body of manuscripts (Berlin SBPK Lat. Fol. 462; Parma Biblioteca Palatina 1227; Wien, ÖsterreichischeNationalBibliothek, 2094) that contain treatises on feudal law, in preparation for a monograph on the codification and influence of the Libri Feudorum on legal practice in Italy and France (1150-1250). This analysis concerns the sedimentation and textual processes that led to the making of the Libri Feudorum, the diffusion of glossae and commentaries based on this book as well as its different editions circulating simultaneously in the thirteenth century, and the interplay between these texts, real litigation and social practice.
I have concluded an article (Bringing Feudal Law Back Home, currently under double-blindpeer review) which outlines the main strands of this research. I transcribed a Summa Feudorum contained in Parma 1227which was attributedto Jacques de Revigny but, as I try to demonstrate, was written by a French lawyer active in Italy in the mid-thirteenth century, known as ‘dominus Iacobus de Aurelianis’. A briefly commented transcript of this summais available on our project’s website, but I am currently preparing a commented edition which will be hopefully publishedin the next months in a peer-reviewed journal.
Finally, I am completing a monograph on the practices of writing, the institutionalisation of local power and the development of dispute-solving strategies in northern Italy, seen from a microhistorical perspective to the dialectics between communities, rural lordship and the city-states in the Veneto (1180-1250).