Courtiers and Court Life in Poland, 1386–1795
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Book Series
East Central Europe, 476–1795 AD/CE, vol. 14
Church and Law in Medieval Eastern and Northern Europe
Radoslaw Kotecki, Agata Zielinska (eds)
- Pages: approx. 425 p.
- Size:156 x 234 mm
- Illustrations:2 tables b/w.
- Language(s):English
- Publication Year:2027
- € 105,00 EXCL. VAT RETAIL PRICE
- ISBN: 978-2-503-61840-1
- Hardback
- Forthcoming (Mar/27)
- € 105,00 EXCL. VAT RETAIL PRICE
- ISBN: 978-2-503-61841-8
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Across medieval northern and eastern Europe, Church and Law were forged through negotiation, conflict, and local practice, reshaping authority, belief, and everyday life.
Subject(s)
BIO
Radosław Kotecki (Ph.D. 2014) is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of History, Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz, Poland. He has published on the medieval Church, violence and culture, ducal peace and protection, and recently on clerical warfare and military religion, especially in medieval Poland. His research interests also include legal history, ecclesiastical law, medieval justice, and secular and ecclesiastical penalties. He is co-editor of several books and author of a number of peer-reviewed articles and chapters.
Agata Zielinska (Ph.D. 2021) is an alumna of University College London, where she completed her doctorate on the institutionalisation and territorialisation of the Latin Church in Poland in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Her research focuses on papal governance, and particularly the actions of legates and nuncios, throughout Latin Christendom. She has published articles on the legate Jacques Pantaleon (future Pope Urban IV) and episcopal elections in Poland and England, and recently contributed a chapter on the papacy’s relationship with Central Europe to the Oxford Handbook of Medieval Central Europe.
Summary
Across the High and Late Middle Ages, Church and law in northern and eastern Europe were shaped through negotiation, adaptation, and conflict rather than simple reception. This volume reassesses that process across Bohemia, Hungary, Poland, Scandinavia, and the Baltic lands, showing how Christianisation transformed not only belief, but also legal culture, political authority, and everyday life. The contributors follow the movement of norms from synods and episcopal administration into assemblies, courts, and local communities, tracing how legal and religious expectations were defined, enforced, resisted, and reshaped in practice. The chapters explore matters ranging from marriage, sexuality, and fasting to burial, labour, tithes, jurisdiction, and clerical conduct. Particular attention is given to the period after 1215, when intensified contacts with the Apostolic See, the spread of learned law, and the growth of ecclesiastical administration sharpened both reform ambitions and local responses.
By bringing regional scholarship into wider conversation, this volume places northern and eastern Europe firmly within the broader history of medieval law and religion. It presents medieval normativity not as a fixed system, but as an evolving process in which universal claims and local traditions combined to produce legal and religious cultures that were at once interconnected and distinct.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Church and the Law in Medieval Eastern and Northern Europe: Introduction
RADOSŁAW KOTECKI and AGATA ZIELINSKA
Part I. Clerical Mores
Clerical Mores: Introduction
AGATA ZIELINSKA
Chapter 1. The Everyday Lives of the Clergy in High Medieval Bohemia (1000–1344)
ROBERT ANTONÍN
Chapter 2. Collective Knowledge of the Lesser Clergy in the Context of Clerical Norms (Prussia, Fourteenth-Sixteenth Centuries)
MARCIN SUMOWSKI
Chapter 3. The Synod as an Instrument of Reform in Thirteenth-Century Hungary-Croatia and Poland
IGOR RAZUM
Part II. Normative Rule and Administration
Normative Rule and Administration: Introduction
AGATA ZIELINSKA
Chapter 4. Bolesław I the Brave: A Barbarian or a Forerunner? Christian Sexual Ethics in Poland during the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries
KAROLINA MORAWSKA
Chapter 5. The Absent Bishop: Bishop Árni Þorláksson’s Administrative Experiments
HARALDUR HREINSSON
Chapter 6. Canon Law, Papal Delegations, and the Distribution of Tithes in the Thirteenth-Century Hungarian Church
GÁBOR BARABÁS
Part III. Excommunication
Excommunication: Introduction
RADOSŁAW KOTECKI
Chapter 7. Excommunication in the Swedish Church Province c. 1150–1350
BERTIL NILSSON
Chapter 8. Excommunication and the Ecclesiasticalisation of Livonia
MARI-LIIS NEUBAUER
Chapter 9. Excommunication as a Legal Instrument of Discipline in Late Medieval Bohemia
JAKUB RAZIM
Part IV. Rites, Ordeals, and Trials
Rites, Ordeals, and Trials: Introduction
RADOSŁAW KOTECKI
Chapter 10. Medieval Law and Liturgy in the Northern Periphery: A Norwegian Baptismal Rite
TORGEIR LANDRO
Chapter 11. Medieval Ordeals, Judicial Duels, and the Hungarian Clergy
FILIP LAMPART
Chapter 12. Settling Disputes, Spreading Canon Law: Trials Concerning Parish Rights, Patronages and Tithes in the Dioceses of Prague and Olomouc in the Thirteenth Century
LUKÁŠ FÜHRER
Index
