engleski

Late Medieval Court Records of Dalmatian Cities

The presentation focuses on the 14th century court records of the eastern Adriatic cities of Zadar and Dubrovnik, the problems historian is facing with this type of medieval documentation and several possible ways of approaching them. These court records, and those concerning civil suits in particular, are utterly formalized and lacking any information but the legal claims themselves and procedural steps undertaken. Accordingly it raises the question of how to approach and comprehend late medieval court records in order to explain certain aspects of the past. To answer this question the paper takes into consideration theoretical approaches of the sociologist Niklas Luhmann on legitimizing legal systems through the procedure and of the anthropologist James C. Scott on simplification of social reality. Such an approach allows recontextualisation of documents in order to understand why they are shaped the way they are, and to discern certain nuancies that change the overall historian's view in reading court records.

Anthropology, Law, Social History

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