Lex Iurisdictio: Recherches sur les Assemblées Judiciaires et Législatives, Sur Les Droits et SurLes Obligations Communautaires Dans L'europe Des Francs by Joseph BalonReview by: Brian TierneyThe American Historical Review, Vol. 67, No. 2 (Jan., 1962), pp. 382-383Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1843437 .

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382 Reviews of Books

seen, by truer insights, to be far removed from what truer insights will reveal

about the Iliad. The remainder of the book is the renascence of Greece: after the long dark

centuries, the brightness of a sudden dawn. Pottery is still the one continuum, but

intuition need no longer be so largely confined to the products of one craft. Spe-

cific events are known: greatest in number, the colonizings; and personalities, Hesiod, Arkhilokhos, an increasing throng. Starr has seen that it was all a swift,

exciting, brilliant development. His account has much general matter on "social"

questions, too little that is specific and telling, or new. The organization of society,

the structure of government, the institutions of cult are left vague. Readers weary

of "over-all" statements and of "general" education will tend to feel that, instead

of being stone, brick, and timber, the new Greek poleis were clouds of words.

Other criticisms might be offered, but, making such allowances, undoubtedly this

is the best part of the book, and among synthetic accounts of the Greek renascence

(not numerous, to be sure), this is the best. The author's enthusiasm communi-

cates excitement, and it is no small merit to have avoided wild theories.

As in many Knopf books, the presentation is gracious and aids the content.

The footnotes, for instance, are actually footnotes. They contain much, but

strangely many pioneers of the study, including R. Carpenter, W. B. Dinsmoor,

A. B. Lord, M. Parry, and A. N. Stillwell, are hardly noticed if at all. This is the

more unfortunate because their writings embody the vivid and substantial con-

creteness sometimes absent in this book.

Harvard University STERLING Dow

LEX IURISDICTIO: RECHERCHES SUR LES ASSEMBLRES JUDICIAIRES ET LRGISLATIVES, SUR LES DROITS ET SUR LES OBLIGATIONS COMMUNAUTAIRES DANS L'EUROPE DES FRANCS. In two volumes. By Joseph Bcalon. [lus Medii Aevi, Volume II.] (Namur: Les Anc. Ets Godenne. I960. Pp. xxxiii, 231; 240-609. I,200 fr. B.)

THIS book takes us back to the Teutonic forest once more. For Mr. Balon,

however, it is the Franks rather than the Anglo-Saxons whose tribal peculiarities

provide the key to an understanding of Western institutions. The author, a dis-

tinguished Belgian jurist, is known to legal historians for several excellent studies

on medieval Namur and for a learned but controversial work on Frankish property

law published in I954, Fondements du regimne foncier au moyen atge. The first

volume of his new series on lus Medii Aevi dealt with the structure and organi-

zation of ecclesiastical estates in the early Middle Ages. This second study is con-

cerned with the Frankish conception of lex. A volume of textes justificatifs pre-

sents over a thousand passages from Frankish legal codes, charters, chronicles, and

letters which use the term lex or its derivatives (legalis, legaliter, legitimus,

legitime), while the accompanying volume is a commentary on these texts. The

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Von Karl dem Grossen zu Bernhard von Clairvaux 383

central argument of the book is that, in all the passages cited, the variants of the word lex refer in some way to the procedures of a judicial assembly, and, finally, it is maintained that in Frankish sources the word lex actually meant a judicial assembly (which might also have had a legislative capacity), all other meanings being derived from that primary one. The complex of rights and duties centered around such communal courts created the climate that made possible the subse- quent growth of assemblies of estates.

The collection of texts will be a valuable source book for scholars concerned with these problems, and much of the author's argument is convincing. It can readily be accepted that "Le droit du moyen age fut fondalement collectif," that many legal transactions like transfers of property took place under judicial forms and in the presence of a court, and that, accordingly, references to the procedures of judicial assemblies can often be discerned in Frankish legal sources. But the author has to press his texts very hard to substantiate all his conclusions. To criticize his handling of them point by point would take a review as long as the book, but it seems to me that too often he asserts that the word lex in a given context can only be translated as "jurisdiction" or "judicial assembly" when in fact that obvious word "law" provides a quite satisfactory rendering. An underly- ing assumption of the whole argument is that formulas like legitimo iure, iuste et legaliter are never to be explained as mere repetitious rhetoric but always as ex- pressions of sophisticated legal distinctions. "Le style juridique du moyen age, d eja a l'epoque merovingienne, est 1a tout entier, comme un temoignage irrecusa- ble de grandeur, de verite et de precision." It is indeed hard to believe that the Merovingian charters with their debased handwriting, debased Latin, and dismal testimony to debased institutions were drafted by men who were consciously en- gaged in shaping a supple, nuanced, and precise legal language with terms of art indeed "plus precises, plus fermes que les notres."

In short this is a work that reflects real erudition and great industry and that offers many stimulating insights on particular points, but its more sweeping gen- eralizations cannot be accepted without substantial reservations.

Cornell University BRIAN TIERNEY

DER KOSMOS DES MITTELALTERS VON KARL DEM GROSSEN ZU BERNHARD VON CLAIRVAUX. By Wolfram von den Steinen. (Bern: Francke Verlag. T959. PP. 400. 48 fr. S.)

THE author's definition of his title shows the breadth of his interests and the ambitious goal which he set himself in writing this book. "Cosmos," he says, "stretches from the greatest to the smallest, and from the material to the spiritual. The world of the Middle Ages-in this everything is to be understood which lay within the horizon of the men of that period, all the different ways in which they established themselves on their earth. But cosmos means at the same time organi-

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