Topic: Europe Awakening to Law, Rights, and Justice
Historians of early modern Europe have seen in the rise of legal institutions (schools of law, the sharp rise in men with degrees in civil and canon law, notaries and other legal officials, city councils, communes) a powerful movement to place social and civic interaction on a firm, equitable legal basis to curb and eliminate violence, guarantee justice for all within communities, eliminate oppression by nobles and magnates, end exploitation of all kinds, and prevent authoritarian (esp. tyrannical rule). These historians look above all at the cities, especially those in the thirteenth and fourteenth century when towns established “communes” (communal, participatory governments) to manage their own affairs and exclude whenever possible — and as much as possible — the intrusion of popes, kings, nobles, and other “outside” elements. Propelling this movement for justice were the major crises of the fourteenth century (plague, demographic loss, incessant warfare, economic decline, popular unrest and violence), which stirred up the call for radical social change and a society based upon law and justice.
In this paper you are asked to examine this shift to establish local governments on the basis of law, and to consider the resistances to this. Not all men and women were committed to these changes. There was much resistance to the rule of law. So, in brief, you are asked to examine the sources we have read and find evidence of men and women seeking new social arrangements based upon law that would provide them protections against the depredations of nobles, kings, emperors and popes. One important consideration in your analysis should take into account those factors in society, politics, religion, and the economy that worked to bring about this awareness of things as being different and in need of change.