Why did early medieval kings declare certain properties to be
immune from the judicial and fiscal encroachments of their own
agents Did weakness compel them to prohibit their agents from
entering these properties as historians have traditionally
believed? In a richly detailed book that will be greeted as a
landmark addition to the literature on the Middle Ages. Barbara H.
Rosenwein argues that immunities were markers of power. By placing
restraints on themselves and their agents, kings demonstrated their
authority, affirmed their status. and manipulated the boundaries of
sacred space.
Rosenwein transforms our understanding of an institution central
to the political and social dynamics of medieval Europe. She
reveals how immunities were used by kings and other leaders to
forge alliances with the noble families and monastic centers which
were central to their power. Generally viewed as unchanging
juridical instruments, immunities as they appear here are as fluid
and diverse as the disparate social and political conflicts that
they at once embody and seek to defuse. Their legacy reverberates
in the modern world where liberal institutions, with their emphasis
on state restraint, clash with others that encourage governmental
intrusion. The protections against unreasonable searches and
seizures provided by English common law and the U.S. Constitution
developed in part out of the medieval experience of immunities and
the institutions that were elaborated to breach them.
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