6 Ch. 1 • Medieval Legacies and Transforming Discoveries
protected residents against bandits and disease (during times of plague and
epidemics) stood also as symbols of urban privileges. Paris, for example, was
dotted with enclaves of ecclesiastical authority.
Part of Europe’s fragmentation was due to its three systems of law: civil,
canon, and customary. The legal concepts, principles, and procedures of
civil law evolved from Roman law, which was based on the rational inter
pretation of written law applied to human affairs. Civil laws were decreed
and thereby sanctioned by rulers, whose authority stemmed in part from
their right to make or impose laws. The development of civil law, then, was
conducive to the development of sovereign states by closely associating the
power of rulers of states with the force of law. Canon law, established by
the pope for the Western Church, codified in Latin the canons of Church
councils and the revealed authorities of the Bible and Church fathers. As
with civil law, canon law helped affirm, at least in principle, the authority
of spiritual rulers—the popes, cardinals, and bishops—by closely linking
the law to the authority of the rulers in general, whose subjects owed them
personal allegiance.
Yet, to be sure, in the late Middle Ages, cross-cutting allegiances—the
most common being to both secular and ecclesiastical authorities—were
often the norm. Subjects of competing authorities used the system to
exploit jurisdictional conflicts to their own ends, whenever possible. This
sometimes served to reinforce the influence of multiple authorities. Thus,
the effective authority of rulers could end up being rather distant.
Customary, or common law, was a codification of established custom,
implying a constant reference to decisions taken earlier by judges. It was
the usual mode of law in all areas where Roman law was not used. In West
ern Europe, customary law developed out of the customs of feudalism (see
below), a set of reciprocal economic, social, and political relationships that
encouraged decentralized power structures.
In England, where common law unified the customary law for the whole
land, laws were overseen by local courts, which contributed to the decentral
ization of English royal authority. Unlike Roman law, which helped shape
the sense that the ruler was a sovereign lawgiver who could override custom,
customary law helped corporate groups (such as guilds, which were craft
associations) or individuals assert their interests and rights by establishing
precedents that, at least in principle, could override the ruler’s intervention
in the legal process.
Europe’s political fragmentation was accompanied by cultural fragmenta
tion, reinforced by the many languages spoken. Latin, the language of cul
ture, was still spoken in university towns—thus the “Latin Quarter” in Paris.
Distances and difficulties in travel and communication were also imposing.
It sometimes took months for mail to arrive. The shortest time to travel from
Madrid to Venice was twenty-two days, and the longest, in bad weather, was
four times that.