In a series of essays based on surviving documents of actual court
practices from Perugia and Bologna, as well as laws, statutes, and
theoretical works from the 12th and 13th centuries, Massimo Vallerani
offers important historical insights into the establishment of a
trial-based public justice system. Challenging the long-standing
evolutionary paradigm of medieval legal procedures, Vallerani argues
that public justice was not the triumph of strong inquisitorial
procedure over weak accusatory procedure, but rather a process in which
the two procedures developed in tandem. He demonstrates that inquisition
and accusation shared many features in their intertwining goals of
punishment and reconciliation.
The grand narrative of the evolution of criminal justice is dismantled
in this work, originally published in Italian and widely cited as a
groundbreaking study of legal procedure. Vallerani contends that
accusatio and inquisitio were formed simultaneously to address different
needs: to seek and construct different "truths"--the truth of the fact
that occurred outside the courtroom as revealed by the probing of the
judge, and the truth that emerges inside the triadic model of the
courtroom as a result of negotiations between the disputing parties
under the guidance of the judge.
Vallerani's rich approach to his sources includes statistical analysis
of the court records, revealing the functioning of the courts in terms
of the incidence of torture, the proportions of trials initiated by
accusatio and inquisitio, and the percentage of trials suspended at
different stages of litigation. Furthermore, he sets legal procedures
within the context of a society and political world immersed in violence
and conflict and shows how the supplica, or petition for pardon, played
a major role in the transformation from communal to signorial government
in the early fourteenth century.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR AND TRANSLATOR:
Massimo Vallerani teaches medieval history at the University of Turin.
Sarah Rubin Blanshei is dean of the college and professor of history
emerita of Agnes Scott College.
PRAISE FOR THE BOOK:
"Vallerani's profound knowledge of the preserved trial records . . .
Combined with a knowledge of the normative provisions of the scholarly
trial law and prevailing institutional conditions . . . Deserves the
highest praise."--Susanne Lepsius, Rechtsgeschichte, on the Italian
edition
"An important contribution to the debate on medieval public
justice."--Gian Paolo G. Scharf, Società et storia, on the Italian
edition
"Sarah Rubin Blanshei has done a great service in service in making this
work accessible to a wider audience." --Renaissance Quarterly
"A very valuable and stimulating book, deserving of a wide readership .
. .The book is characterized by its breadth of approach and by the wide
range of sources . . .The result is a book that succeeds admirably in
combining technical legal history with the history of disputes and of
local politics. Such virtues make the book required reading for legal
historians. . .Professor Rubin Blanshei is to be heartily congratulated
in bringing this fine book to a wider readership." --Catholic
Historical Review
