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Law, Justice, and Society in the Medieval World

An Introduction through Film

Edited by Esther Liberman Cuenca, M. Christina Bruno and Anthony Perron

Contributor(s): Maria Americo, Daniel Armenti, Lucy C. Barnhouse, Christopher Bonura, M. Christina Bruno, Julie K. Chamberlin, Celia Chazelle, Rachel Ellen Clark, Esther Liberman Cuenca, Casey Ireland, Henry Ansgar Kelly, Sarah C. Luginbill, Coral Lumbley, Sara McDougall, Nathan Melson, Nahir I. Otaño Gracia, Anthony Perron, Asif A. Siddiqi, Eugene Smelyansky, Lorraine Kochanske Stock, Spencer Strub and David M. Perry

Fordham Series in Medieval Studies

Pub Date: May 6, 2025

ISBN: 9781531510138

Page Count: 288

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Price: $29.95

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Description: This coursebook is the first full-length study of cinematic “legal medievalism,” or the modern interpretation of medieval law in film and popular culture

For more than a century, filmmakers have used the “Middle Ages” to produce popular entertainment and comment on contemporary issues. Each of the twenty chapters in Law, Justice, and Society in the Medieval World represents an original contribution to our understanding of how medieval regulations, laws, and customs have been depicted in film. It offers a window into the “rules” of medieval society through the lens of popular culture.

This book includes analyses of recent and older films, avant-garde as well as popular cinema. Films discussed in this book include Braveheart (1995), Kingdom of Heaven (2005), The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), The Last Duel (2021), The Green Knight (2021), The Little Hours (2017), and The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), among others.

Each chapter explores the contemporary context of the film in question, the medieval literary or historical milieu the film references, and the lessons the film can teach us about the medieval world. Attached to each chapter is an appendix of medieval documentary sources and reading questions to prompt critical reflection.
Reviews: This book is a lively and erudite collection of essays addressing the complex relationship between the Middle Ages and their cinematic representation since the beginning of the twentieth century. Certain of the films are well known, classics even; others have fallen into obscurity over the years, but all of them under the skillful scrutiny of the scholars represented in the collection testify powerfully to the benefits—and dangers—of mobilizing imagined medieval histories in the cultural and ideological controversies of modernity.---William Chester Jordan, Princeton University

These diverse and penetrating essays on medieval films show us the Middle Ages as a collection of legal communities. Legal documents and narratives of justice vividly recreate the lives of everyday medieval people, focusing intimately on their courtroom trials, codes of conduct and religious practices. A powerful teaching tool for a variety of medieval courses.---William F. Woods, MV Hughes Professor of English, emeritus, Wichita State University, and author of Chaucerian Spaces: Spatial Poetics in Chaucer's Opening Tales

Law, Justice, and Society in the Medieval World is a sophisticated and accessible collection of essays that puts medieval history and medievalist films into productive conversation with each other. It will be an excellent resource for anyone who wants to better understand the historical contexts for medievalist films and as a model for how to take medievalist film seriously as part of the ongoing project of better understanding medieval history and its reception. The essays are engaging, the variety of topics is excellent and timely without feeling trendy, and the appendices provide the concrete and complex historical context we all need in order to avoid oversimplifying the medieval world.---Usha Vishnuvajjala, author of Feminist Medievalisms: Embodiment and Vulnerability in Literature and Film

This groundbreaking collection is designed to support the teaching of medieval history through film. Its twenty highly accessible chapters concern a century’s worth of medievalist films (produced 1928 – 2021) set all over Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, addressing both the contemporary contexts of the films and the medieval milieux that the films reference. Appended to each chapter are relevant medieval sources and reading questions. Aimed at instructors utilizing medievalist films to teach both the realities of the period and the dynamics of cinematic representation to undergraduates, the collection doesn’t so much fill a gap as create a new paradigm.---Felice Lifshitz, author of Reading Gender: Studies in Medieval Manuscripts and Medievalist Films

A wonderful resource for lovers of medieval history and cinema alike, this book offers analysis of the last century of film and its representation of legal practice and ideals of justice in medieval Europe. Each chapter offers incisive analysis of a particular film, coupled with a relevant primary source and questions for further thought. The result is an illuminating meditation on the relationship between medieval history and the various contexts and sensibilities that shape its modern portrayal. This book is not only for educators, medieval scholars, and students of history, it is also for all of those who watch a film and then wonder... Is that really how it was?---Ada Maria Kuskowski, Associate Professor at University of Pennsylvania and author of Vernacular Law: Writing and the Reinvention of Customary Law in Medieval France

What a refreshing and lively collection of essays! Each one invites us to read film as an interpretive genre that, like traditional historiography, responds to shifts in our understanding of the Middle Ages. Analyzing medieval law and justice through the lens of global film inspires readers to see these fields anew and rethink the place of art in historical inquiry.---Kristina Richardson, Professor of History and Midde Eastern & South Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Virginia
Details: ISBN-13 9781531510138
Published: 2025-05-06

Trim: 6.000in x 9.000in x 0.000in
Contributors: Contributions: Maria Americo
Contributions: Daniel Armenti
Contributions: Lucy C. Barnhouse
Contributions: Christopher Bonura
Contributions: M. Christina Bruno
M. Christina Bruno is Associate Director of the Center for Medieval Studies at Fordham University in New York. She is a historian of late medieval Italy, focusing upon fifteenth-century Italian Observant Franciscans as legal and economic experts and practitioners.
Contributions: Julie K. Chamberlin
Contributions: Celia Chazelle
Contributions: Rachel Ellen Clark
Contributions: Esther Liberman Cuenca
Esther Liberman Cuenca is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Houston- Victoria. She is the author of The Making of Urban Customary Law in Medieval and Reformation England. Her essays have appeared in Urban History, The Paris Review, Historical Reflections, Popular Music, and Continuity and Change.
Contributions: Casey Ireland
Contributions: Henry Ansgar Kelly
Contributions: Sarah C. Luginbill
Contributions: Coral Lumbley
Contributions: Sara McDougall
Contributions: Nathan Melson
Contributions: Nahir I. Otaño Gracia
Contributions: Anthony Perron
Anthony Perron is Associate Professor of History at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. He is the author of three chapters in the Cambridge Histories series, including the Cambridge History of Medieval Canon Law. He has published articles in The Catholic Historical Review, The Journal of the Historical Society, and Historical Reflections, as well as in several edited volumes.
Contributions: David M. Perry
David Perry—Professor of Medieval History at Dominican University from 2006 to 2017—is a columnist for Pacific Standard Magazine and a freelance journalist covering politics, history, education, and disability rights. His scholarly work focuses on Venice, the Crusades, and the Mediterranean world. He is the author of Sacred Plunder: Venice and the Aftermath of the Fourth Crusade (Penn State, 2015).
Contributions: Asif A. Siddiqi
Contributions: Eugene Smelyansky
Contributions: Lorraine Kochanske Stock
Contributions: Spencer Strub