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Podcast: Exchanges: A Cambridge UP Podcast
Episode: Ada Maria Kuskowski, "Vernacular Law; Writing and the Reinvention of Customary Law in Medieval France" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
Description: Custom was fundamental to mediaeval legal practice. Whether in a property dispute or a trial for murder, the aggrieved and accused would go to lay court where cases were resolved according to custom. What custom meant, however, went through a radical shift in the mediaeval period. Between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, custom went from being a largely oral and performed practice to one that was also conceptualised in writing.In Vernacular Law: Writing and the Reinvention of Customary Law in Medieval France (Cambridge University Press, 2022), Dr. Ada Maria Kuskowski uses French lawbooks known as coutumiers to trac...