LEGAL PRACTICE IN ITALY IN THE MIDDLE AGES: REVIEW OF NEW RESEARCHES ON THE TOPIC
The article is a study of foreign historiography of the last two decades. The author analyzes the work of American and Italian historians, in which legal history becomes the starting point for the study of non-legal areas: social, cultural, institutional and others. The aim of the work was to trace how the legal practice was used for the reconstruction of social history, as well as to study in more detail the opportunities provided by the judicial archive for the researcher. The author examines the sources, subjects and methods of work of American historians Trevor Dean «Crime and justice in Late Medieval Italy» (New York, 2007), Glenn Kumhera «The benefits of peace: Private peacemaking in late medieval Italy» (Leiden, 2017), Sergio Pagano «Paesi infetti: Magia, eresia e faide familiari nel tortonese durante il secolo XVI» (Roma, 2003), Riccardo Parmeggiani «L’inquisizione a Firenze nell’eta di Dante» (Bologna, 2018), Marina Gazzini «Storie di vita e di malavita» (Firenze, 2017). The history of legal practice is actively developed by both modern American and Italian researchers. Italians have been working on this topic for a long time and very fruitfully. In recent years, the favorite genre of Italian historians has become case- study, and if American researches on the basis of legal incidents reconstruct more global processes, the Italian ones study local facts on the basis of the general outline of history. It is possible to say that the main trend of works devoted to the legal history of medieval Italy, was the deliberate avoidance of the evolutionary paradigm, which was previously abused by historians, trying to identify that the legal system «explains» the state, and legal procedures reflect its stage of development. The sources relating to the judicial history and published in recent decades, give reason for research optimism. Those cases that are included in the monographs are of considerable interest. It seems to us that with a thorough and comprehensive study of archival material, it is possible to create a more structural and consistent picture of medieval society in Italy through legal practice.