justice 415mentor, was a charlatan and magician and a poor model
for intellectual and religious pagan revival. Also mis-
guided was Julian’s 363 attack on Persia, where he was
killed in battle on June 26, 363, by a Christian, according
to some. He became the personification of evil to Chris-
tian apologists.
Further reading:Julian, The Works of the Emperor
Julian,ed. and trans. W. C. Wright, 3 vols. (London:
Heinemann, 1913–1923); G. W. Bowersock, Julian the
Apostate (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1978); Robert Browning, The Emperor Julian(Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1976); Rowland B. E.
Smith, Julian’s Gods: Religion and Philosophy in the
Thought and Action of Julian the Apostate (New York:
Routledge, 1995).
jury trial The jury trial became an important part of
the system of administering JUSTICEin the Middle Ages
in ENGLAND. The practice sprang from the practices of
Germanic tribes and their kingdoms in western Europe.
It was based on the deliberative participation of freemen
in the assemblies, where an accused was tried. Such an
assembly, called a mallusor a placetum,was summoned
by a chief or king. During the administrative and
bureaucraciation of western Europe in the 10th and
11th centuries, such assemblies were often replaced by
courts, at which a lord or his vassals acted as judges. In
England, however, the ancient system continued, even
after the Norman Conquest. Justice was decided by
popular assemblies for the shire or the hundred. During
the 12th century, attendance at such assemblies came to
be restricted to a certain number of freemen who,
according to the statutes issued by HENRYII, had to take
an oath to follow the law before a sheriff, as a represen-
tative of the king. Such freemen were called jurors, with
their composite group named a jury. Judicial decisions
taken by a jury on acquittal or sentencing of an accused
came to be the fundamental procedure in English
common law.
See alsoFORTESCUE,JOHN;HENRYII, KING OFEN-
GLAND;ORDEAL.
Further reading:John H. Baker, An Introduction to
English Legal History, 3d ed. (London: Butterworth’s,
1990); S. F. C. Milsom, Historical Foundations of the Com-
mon Law,2d ed. (London: Butterworth’s, 1981); Theodore
F. T. Plucknett, A Concise History of the Common Law,2d
ed. (London: Butterworth, 1936).justice In medieval ethical, political, and social
thought, the virtue justice, which might be defined as “a
constant and perpetual will to assign to each his right,”
was approached in a theological context as an attribute of
GODor in connection with doing the just thing in this
world. In moral PHILOSOPHY, prudence, fortitude, temper-
ance, and justice were the CARDINAL VIRTUESas derived
from the ideas of Plato. This doctrine was known in the
Middle Ages, before the translation and circulation of
Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics,through reading and con-
sulting Roman and patristic sources.
Some medieval thinkers on virtues such as justice
organized their conception of justice around the idea of
seeking rectitude. Only the person who sought rectitude
for its very own sake could be called just. Thomas
AQUINASwas dependent on such an Aristotelian theory
of justice as set forth in the Nicomachean Ethics.Culti-
vated as a habit, “general justice” or “legal justice”
should lead humans to seek the common good of all,
following Aristotle in distinguishing more general
legal justice from particular justice. Particular justice
regulated one’s relations with other people, either as a
relationship of one individual to another or as a rela-
tionship based on what was common to both individu-
als. Distributive justice shared proportionately the
common good and goods of society equitably, according
to merit. In commutative justice, the object was toMarble statue traditionally of the emperor Julian the Apostate
as a pagan philosopher, in the Musee National Thermes &
Hôtel de Cluny de Moyen Âge in Paris (Courtesy Edward
English)