During the year 2018 I have delivered several articles and one book ready for publishing. I have devoted much work to the edition of the second volume, centered on the Middle Ages, of the Bloomsbury series Cultural History of Law. I am the author of the Introduction (with Laurent Mayali, Berkeley, also co-editor of the volume), and of a chapter on Constitution (with L. Mayali and B. Pasciuta).
I have finished articles on different topics, all related to CLCLCL project:
- The centre and the margins of the jungle of glossed manuscripts, to be published to be published in a volume in the series Abhandlungen zur rechtswissenschaftlichen Grundlagenforschung, Munich;
- Lapse of Time in Medieval Laws: Procedure, Prescription, Presumptions, Custom, forthcoming in a volume directed by E. Schrage and H. Dondorp, Duncker-Humboldt
- Modena 1182, the origins of a new paradigm of ownership. The interface between historical contingency and the scholarly invention of legal categories, forthcoming in the review Glossae
- The Order and the Volk. Romantic Roots and Enduring Fascination of the German Constitutional History, forthcoming in the Festrschrift for Jan Hallebeek
- Laici, giuristi, umanisti. Ronald Witt e l’Italia medievale, forthcoming in Quellen und Forschungen aus Italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken
I am currently working at a survey of miscellaneous manuscripts of Anglo-Norman origins containing legal works of the 12th and 13th Century. My aim is to get a clearer idea of the interrelations between theology and law during the crucial times of the establishment of Common Law and the creation of the Ius Commune. I spent one week working in the Manuscripts Department of the British Library (February 2018), a month in the Bodleian Library (May 2018), and some weeks in the Vatican Library (Rome). I am focusing on some manuscripts, which reveal the existence of a complex theological-legal culture, and on some central figures of theologians/jurists. One of the key authors seems to be the bishop Walther de Coutances, justiciar under Richard I and probably the author of the first collection of Brocarda, namely the gatherings of opposite arguments to be used in judicial discussions. He is also the author of an early ordo iudiciarius.