Law and Legal Agreements 600–1250, University of Cambridge, January 12–13, 2018

Following on from the Law and Language Colloquium in 2015 and the Law and Ritual Colloquium in 2016, the final Colloquium in the Voices of Law series, funded by The Leverhulme Trust, will be Law and Legal Agreements 600-1250. This conference aims to draw together scholars working on various geographical areas to identify points of similarity and contrast in language, text and legal practice.

The making of legal agreements opens a window onto various aspects of the medieval world, from trade to marriage to the treatment of ‘outsiders’, and this conference aims to chart the development of these agreements from the period (c.600) to c.1250.

Papers covering the following strands are encouraged, but not limited to:

• Agreement and Disagreement – including aspects of judgments and arbitration, conflict resolution, the material and visual culture of legal disputes, violence
• Inheritance, Kinship and Marriage – including topics on dower and dowry; family relationships defined through legal action; divorce and annulment of marriage; fostering and the process of adoption; wardship and inheritance, including will making
• Status, ‘Other’ and Gender – including free and unfree; female agency; queer cases before the courts; sexual deviancy and the intersectionality of status and gender in the making of legal agreements. This strand can also consider the legal status of aliens and strangers; exclusion, expulsion and displacement; and issues surrounding community and identity, including different faith identities and heretical identities in secular and canon law
• The Spoken vs the Written Word – including performance; witnesses and jurors; the use of liturgy and religious texts; satire
• Written versus Material Evidence – including the materiality of legal spaces; archaeology and architecture; the interaction between written and material evidence