Machuskyy on The Right of Blood-Revenge in a Medieval Ukraine

Volodymyr Machuskyy, Kyiv National Economic Univesrity named after Vadym Hetman, has published The Right of Blood-Revenge in a Medieval Ukraine: The Concept and the Evolution. Here is the abstract.

The idea and practice of blood-revenge existed in ancient societies around the world. Because of its high prevalence and significance, blood-revenge as a social phenomenon for a long time was the subject of study of a sufficiently large number of scientists, representatives of various sciences from many countries. The scientific diversity in the context of the study of blood revenge paradoxically leads to contradictory scientific results and, as a consequence, makes it difficult to obtain true knowledge about the nature of blood-revenge. Hence, there was an objective need to study the general patterns of the emergence, functioning and gradual withering away of blood-revenge as a special institute in the system of social regulation of the medieval society on the territory of modern Ukraine. Main conclusions: 1. The right of blood-revenge is a social institution of collective security in a primitive society aimed at protecting individuals from violent crimes. 2. The evolution of the right of blood-revenge in Kyivan Rus was due to the transformation from the right of blood-revenge into a cash ransom and, subsequently, in the death penalty as a surrogate of the right of blood-revenge.

The full text is not available from SSRN.

Now available from the Ohio State University Press: The Politics of Ecology: Land, Life, and Law in Medieval Britain

Now available: The Politics of Ecology: Land, Life, and Law in Medieval Britain (Randy P. Schiff and Joseph Taylor, eds.; Ohio State University Press, 2016) (Interventions: New Studies in Medieval Culture). From the publisher's description of the contents:

If medieval literary studies is, like so many fields, currently conditioned by an ecological turn that dislodges the human from its central place in materialist analysis, then why now focus on the law? Is not the law the most human, if not indeed the human, institution? In proposing that all life in medieval Britain, whether animal or vegetable, was subject to the same legal machine that enabled claims on land, are we not ignoring the ecocritical demand that we counteract human exceptionalism and reframe the past with inhuman eyes? This volume, edited by Randy P. Schiff and Joseph Taylor, responds to these questions by infusing biopolitical material and theory into ecocentric studies of medieval life. The Politics of Ecology: Land, Life, and Law in Medieval Britain pursues the political power of sovereign law as it disciplines and manages various forms of natural life, and discloses the literary biopolitics played out in texts that work out the fraught interactions of life and law, in all its forms. Contributors to this volume explore such issues as legal networks and death, Arthurian bare life, Chaucerian medical biopolitics, the biopolitics of fur, ecologies of sainthood, arboreal political theology, conservation and political ecology, and geographical melancholy. Bringing together both established and rising critical voices, The Politics of Ecology creates a place for cutting-edge medievalist ecocriticism focused on the intersections of land, life, and law in medieval English, French, and Latin literature. Randy P. Schiff is Associate Professor of English at SUNY Buffalo. Joseph Taylor is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Faulkner on Law and Authority in the Early Middle Ages: A New Book From Cambridge University Press

Forthcoming: Thomas Faulkner, Law and Authority in the Early Middle Ages: The Frankish leges in the Carolingian Period (Cambridge University Press, 2016) (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series). 

The barbarian law codes, compiled between the sixth and eighth centuries, were copied remarkably frequently in the Carolingian ninth century. They provide crucial evidence for early medieval society, including the settlement of disputes, the nature of political authority, literacy, and the construction of ethnic identities. Yet it has proved extremely difficult to establish why the codes were copied in the ninth century, how they were read, and how their rich evidence should be used. Thomas Faulkner tackles these questions more systematically than ever before, proposing new understandings of the relationship between the making of law and royal power, and the reading of law and the maintenance of ethnic identities. Faulkner suggests major reinterpretations of central texts, including the Carolingian law codes, the capitularies adding to the laws, and Carolingian revisions of earlier barbarian and Roman laws. He also provides detailed analysis of legal manuscripts, especially those associated with the leges-scriptorium. Examines the uses of the leges barbarorum in Carolingian Europe, contributing to a long-standing debate in English and German historiography on the use of written law codes in early medieval Europe. Contributes to the study of early medieval kingship, dispute settlement, ethnic identity and literacy Brings German scholarship to the attention of English speakers, providing Anglophone readers with a guide to otherwise inaccessible work.

More about the publication at the publisher's website here.