Jurists and the Medieval State: Varieties and Development of a Symbiotic Relationship, 1000-1500

This workshop proposes to look at the evolution of the roles that jurists played in government, as the latter developed and became more complex in the period between ca. 1000 and 1500. Historians have long accepted that university trained jurists, both clerical and lay, were instrumental to the development of medieval government. The growth of the administrative apparatus of government and the expansion of its claims of authority and control on society combined with the thickening numbers of law graduates to broaden the scope of the service that jurists provided to rulers. By inviting participants to focus their analysis on a common set of questions (specified below), this workshop will attempt to bring out the stable as well as the dynamic aspects of that service