Fodalits et droits savants dans le Midi mdival

The feudal system has come to be seen as one of the most characteristic features of the Western Middle Ages, yet the study of feudal law has not always received the same attention as that given to its institutions. This law, it is true, was a subject of secondary importance in the medieval universities, but there does remain a corpus of writing sufficiently large to permit the investigation of how it related to medieval practice. In these articles, now provided with extensive additional notes, Grard Giordanengo has undertaken such an investigation, with particular reference to Southern France in the 12th-14th centuries. He shows how, in Provence, legal doctrine did exert a clear influence on feudal practice, and that it was the jurists attached to princely or ecclesiastic entourages who were the key to its dissemination. In the Dauphin, on the other hand, theory had a more limited impact, and feudal ties became not a mark of subjection, but a means of recognising legal and social status. At the governmental level, finally, he argues that it was not any feudal theory, nor even any feudal structures, but rather the absolutist doctrines of Roman law and the Old Testament that shaped the political ideology - and practice, if possible - of the medieval king. Le systme fodal est considr comme tant lune des caractristiques fondamentales du Moyen Age occidental; cependant, ltude du droit fodal savant na pas toujours fait lobjet de la mme attention que celle porte ses institutions et coutumes. Ce droit, il est vrai, tait un sujet dimportance secondaire au sein des universits mdivales, mais il reste nanmoins, un ensemble dcrits suffisamment important pour quil soit possible dexaminer son influence sur la pratique mdivale. Au cours de ces articles, ds prsent pourvus de notes supplmentaires, Grard Giordanengo a entrepris une telle analyse, se rfrant plus particulirement au Sud de l