Law, Justice, and Society in the Medieval World: An Introduction through Film is a thoughtfully designed and accessible coursebook that would be appropriately assigned in a variety of medieval studies courses. The editors Esther Liberman Cuenca, M. Christina Bruno, and Anthony Perron, as well as the authors, especially deserve praise for offering up insightful essays with a minimum of the jargon that frequently makes scholarship on both medieval cinema and medievalism inaccessible to many undergraduate students. It includes a good mix of classic and more recent popular films, and the authors all balance summary and analysis well in their essays.
Twenty essays on twenty different films (fully listed below) offer numerous possibilities for structuring a course. They range in chronology from the late Roman Empire to the first voyage of Christopher Columbus, although without these outliers they are mostly conventionally high medieval. The choice of law, justice, and society as the central theme helps the collection to cohere while still allowing for a healthy variety of specific topics. That there is overlap between some essays is not surprising or detrimental, and instructors would be unlikely to assign every one of them anyway.
Particularly useful for the classroom are the appendix and reading questions at the end of every essay. The appendices contain short excerpts, usually two or three pages, from primary sources related to the film in question. Authors refer to these excerpts in their essays, showing by example how the historical record and films might be interpreted together to different purposes. The three or four reading questions that follow, meanwhile, offer further guidance to interpreting the sources and films critically. No instructor will find all the sources or reading questions to be the same as they would have chosen, but at minimum they offer good starting points for discussion or short writing assignments.
Another editorial decision that makes this a coursebook to consider adopting is the uniformly concise length of each essay at what appears to be roughly eight pages on average. Everyone will have different opinions on which essays are strongest, but all the authors try to provide readers a balance of historical context, analysis in relation to the theme of law, justice and society, and some film criticism. Within such constraints, more is left unsaid than not, especially regarding cinematography, which happily leaves plenty of space for either lectures or discussion. Together with the appendices and reading questions, this makes the coursebook adaptable in many ways.
The focus on law in the title may lead some to think the essays are narrower than they are. Topics as diverse as relics, honor, violence, hairstyles, heresy, and masculinity, for example, are each prominent in one or more essays. Collectively, the essays treat law in the widest possible sense: “medieval society at all levels was cut through by different types of law, overlapping and at times competing with each other...Viewed in this light, medieval society, as a collection of legal communities and as a society of law(s), draws much closer to our own.” As for how that pertains to films, the editors suggest the term “legal medievalism” as “the modern reimagining of the very structures that held these medieval societies together” (2-3).
The greatest utility of employing the unifying theme is less to build a coherent, summative lesson in medieval legal culture than to provide one demonstrative entry point to talking about what it means for an audience to view the past through film. For that reason, the fact that some essays strain even the book’s broad definition of legal culture is not much of a problem. And in some cases, such as the several essays that deal with monastic regulation or religious belief within a legal framework, it provides an interesting vantage point for students that would probably not be the first way they conceptualized the subject.
The book is organized into four thematic sections, each of which includes five essays: “Canon Law and the World of the Medieval Church,” “‘Feudal’ Law and the Customs of Lordship,” “Women and Representations of Premodern Law,” and “Religious Conflict and Forging Communities through Law.” This division is probably the least useful feature of the book, though it does signal the prominent representation of religion relative to other possible topics. Most instructors, certainly this one, would simply pick and choose essays according to the structure of their course, and there is no reason not do so.
In summary, this is a useful coursebook, accessible as well as affordable. This reviewer plans to use it for a general education course on “Medieval History in Film and Literature,” requiring some chapters for the films usually assigned such as The Passion of Joan of Arc and more recently The Green Knight, and allowing students to choose a couple others along with the related films. Just as everyone will have their favorite essays, they will also have their favorite films that may or may not be included here. I checked twice to make sure I had not misremembered before observing that neither The Seventh Seal nor more surprisingly The Virgin Spring were included, and I have always chosen The Lion in Winter over Becket. The bottom line is that there is more than enough here to work with and plenty of room for the instructor to embellish.
Contents
Introduction - Esther Liberman Cuenca, M. Christina Bruno, and Anthony Perron
Canon Law and the World of the Medieval Church
1. Between Royal Law and Canon Law in Becket (1964) - Anthony Perron
2. Relic Movement, Anathema, and Crusade in Pilgrimage (2017) - Sarah C. Luginbill
3. The Creation of the Franciscan Rule in Francesco (1989) - Nathan Melson
4. Poverty and Heresy in The Name of the Rose (1986) - M. Christina Bruno
5. Joan of Arc’s Inquisitorial Trial of Faith in The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) - Henry Ansgar Kelly
“Feudal” Law and the Customs of Lordship
6. The Chivalric Code in The Green Knight (2021) - Coral Lumbley
7. Crusading and Oath-Taking in Kingdom of Heaven (2005) - Esther Liberman Cuenca
8. Forest Law in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) - Casey Ireland
9. Trial by Battle and Gendered Medievalisms in The Last Duel (2021) - Sara McDougall and David M. Perry
10. Animal Trials in The Advocate (1993) - Julie K. Chamberlin
Women and Representations of Premodern Law
11. Religious Women’s Authority and Rules for Nuns in Vision: From the Life of Hildegard von Bingen (2009) - Lucy C. Barnhouse
12. War, Family, and the Law of the Kyivan Rus in Alexander Nevsky (1938) - Asif A. Siddiqi
13. Church Law, Community Practice, and the Witch Trial That Wasn’t in Sorceress (1987) - Rachel Ellen Clark and Lucy C. Barnhouse
14. The Myth of Jus Primae Noctis, or the “Right of the First Night,” in Braveheart (1995) - Lorraine Kochanske Stock
15. Medieval Satire and the Canon Law of Claustration in The Little Hours (2017) - Spencer Strub
Religious Conflict and Forging Communities through Law
16. Late Roman Law, Women’s Status, and Classical Education in Agora (2009) - Christopher Bonura
17. Depicting the Prophet, Social Justice, and the Pillars of Islam in The Message (1976) - Maria Americo
18. Lawful Language and Global North Encounters in The 13th Warrior (1999) - Daniel Armenti and Nahir I. Otaño Gracia
19. Jewish Assimilation and the Absent “Saracens” and Africans of Ivanhoe (1952) - Celia Chazelle
20. Medieval Science, the Spanish Inquisition, and Religious Violence in 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992) - Eugene Smelyansky