The conference focuses on normative texts – legal texts in the broadest sense – that were literally “on the move”, i.e. they were received in different temporal, geographical, cultural and linguistic environments. The papers present case studies on normative texts ranging from the period between ca. 400 to 1500 AD. By examining a wide range of different cultural and geographical areas, our aim is to show how “legal texts on the move” were indeed a global phenomenon, even though their concrete manifestations were informed by local conditions.

Programme

THURSDAY, 4 SEPTEMBER

09:00-09:10  Welcoming Address

Maximilian Diesenberger

09:10-09:30   Opening Remarks

Till Stüber · Adrian C. Pirtea

09:30 – 11:00     Session 1: Texts crossing the Alps

Chair: Cinzia Grifoni

Stefan Esders
Early Medieval Law across the Alps. 
The Case of Wolfenbüttel, Herzog-August-Bibliothek, Blankenburg  130

Thom Gobbitt
Scholarly Exegesis of the Lombard Laws on Poisoning. 
From the Eleventh-Century Liber Papiensis to the Twelfth-Century Lombarda

11:00 – 11:30   Coffee Break
 

11:30 – 13:00   Session 2: Ecclesiastical Law in the Latin West

Chair: Till Stüber

Sven Meeder
Marriage on the Move. 
The Travels and Adventures of De ratione matrimonii

Christie Pavey
Crossing the Sea and Gaining Applicability. 
African Canons as Evidence against Roman Jurisdiction in the Apiarian Case

13:00 – 14:30    Lunch Break
 

14:30 – 17:15     Session 3: Ancient Law in the Middle Ages

Chair: Stefan Schima

José-Domingo Rodríguez Martín
Thieves Hidden in a Box. 
On the Curious Journey of a Classical Roman Rule to Medieval Serbian Legislation

Dominik Trump
How to Shorten a Text? 
The Evidence of the Epitomes of the Lex Romana Visigothorum

16:00 – 16:30    Coffee Break
 

Ioan Alexandru
Political Theology and Constitutionalism in Byzantium
 

19:00    Dinner for Invited Guests
 

FRIDAY, 5 SEPTEMBER

9:00 – 10:30      Session 4: Greek Canons on the Move

Chair: Ekaterini Mitsiou

Till Stüber
From West to East. 
The Curious Case of the Synod of Serdica

Federico Montinaro
Rome, Jerusalem, Constantinople. 
The Reception of the Second Council of Nicaea before the Crusades

10:30 – 11:00         Coffee Break
 

11:00 – 12:30     Session 5: Legal Texts in the Arabic-Speaking World

Chair: Adrian Pirtea

Mathilde Boudier
Translating and Interpreting Late Antique Greek Canons. 
The Development of Early Islamic Melkite Legal Tradition in Arabic 

Rocio Daga Portillo
The Merging of Islamic and Byzantine Laws in the Arabic Coptic Nomocanons (11^th-14^th centuries). 
The Case of Family and Civil Law

12:30 – 14:00   Lunch Break
 

14:00 – 16:45     Session 6: Syriac Christianities

Chair: Andy Hilkens

Madalina Toca
Letters Made Canons. 
Basil of Caesarea’s Letters in a West Syriac Context

Ephrem Aboud Ishac
Syriac Synodal Canons Crossing Borders

15:30 – 16:00    Coffee Break
 

Carlo Emilio Biuzzi
A Thirteenth-Century Syriac Manuscript as Evidence for a Shared Legal Tradition in the Christian East

16:45 – 17:15  Closing Remarks

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