Valuable new insights into the multi-layered and multi-directional relationship of law, literature, and social regulation in pre-Conquest English society. Pre-Conquest English law was among the most sophisticated in early medieval Europe. Composed largely in the vernacular, it played a crucial role in the evolution of early English identity and exercised a formative influence on the development of the Common Law. However, recent scholarship has also revealed the significant influence of these legal documents and ideas on other cultural domains, both modern and pre-modern. This collection explores the richness of pre-Conquest legal writing by looking beyond its traditional codified form. Drawing on methodologies ranging from traditional philology to legal and literary theory, and from a diverse selection of contributors offering a broad spectrum of disciplines, specialities and perspectives, the essays examine the intersection between traditional juridical texts - from law codes and charters to treatises and religious regulation - and a wide range of literary genres, including hagiography and heroic poetry. In doing so, they demonstrate that the boundary that has traditionally separated "law" from other modes of thought and writing is far more porous than hitherto realized. Overall, the volume yields valuable new insights into the multi-layered and multi-directional relationship of law, literature, and social regulation in pre-Conquest English society.

New insights into key texts and interpretive problems in the history of England and Europe between the eighth and thirteenth centuries. This volume of the Haskins Society Journal demonstrates the Society's continued interest in a broad range of geographical contexts and methodological approaches to medieval history. Chapters include a much-needed reassessment of AElfthryth and her place in the society and governance of tenth-century England, as well as a comprehensive survey of the conceptualization of excommunication in post-Carolingian Europe to c.1200. Further essays explore aspects of the Norman world of southern Italy, including the dynamics of political coalitions and kinship networks, ethnic identity, and material culture. The Journal continues to highlight close analyses of key primary sources,with a study of Angevin kingship in the writings of Hugh of Lincoln and Adam of Eynsham, and an examination of Ralph of Niger's Old Testament exegesis and criticism of crusading in the late twelfth century. A ground-breaking newstudy assesses the utility of colonialism as a valid model for understanding the extraction of sacred resources and relics from the crusader lands. The volume closes with a crucial reconsideration of the agency and power of medieval French peasants as attested in medieval cartularies, opening new approaches for further research into this critical and complex social group.