Examples
- Feudalism
With regards to the law of fiefs, the Livres states that dukes, counts, viscounts, and barons could all hold their land from one another. The Livres also states that la bone devise de droit des persones, des gens, est tele que tot homes ou il sont franc ou serf: "the good division of the law of persons is that all men are either free or servile." This law is based on the Digest but the meaning of the word servi that the medieval author translates "serf" meant "slave".
- Laws of war
The Livres, by defining treason (traïson) as férir, et l'en ne voie pas le cop venir (to wound, and when the blow could not be seen coming), declared all crossbowmen to be traitors, since nobody could see their blows coming.
- Sexual crimes
The Livres has provided scholars with unique insight into medieval legal attitudes to sexual crimes. It does not lay out punishment for prostitutes, preferring to reintegrate them into society in accordance with canon law. It does, however, prescribe the banishment and confiscation of property of the maquerel des femmes (procurer) and the owner of a brothel (bordelerie). It also describes penalties for both male homosexuality and is the first known work to describe them for lesbianism as well. On the first offence, the male sodomite was to be castrated, on the second dismembered, and on the third burned alive. The female sodomite was to be dismembered on the first two offence (exactly what two "members" were to be cut off is uncertain) and burned alive on the third. All their goods accrued to the crown.
Read more about this topic: Li Livres De Jostice Et De Plet
Famous quotes containing the word examples:
“In the examples that I here bring in of what I have [read], heard, done or said, I have refrained from daring to alter even the smallest and most indifferent circumstances. My conscience falsifies not an iota; for my knowledge I cannot answer.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“Histories are more full of examples of the fidelity of dogs than of friends.”
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
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—André Breton (1896–1966)