New ebook: Medieval Canon Law (Patreon)

Our fifth book from Arc Humanities Press is Medieval Canon Law, by Kriston R. Rennie - read here an excerpt:

Medieval canon law is an invention— an evolutionary story of human industry, ingenuity, and change. This book explains part of its creation, adopting a slightly different interpretive lens. It tackles the subject’s formulation through a social history framework, with a view to making sense of a rich and complex legal system and culture, and an equally rich scholarly tradition. But it focuses primarily on a developing period in European history (ca. 400– ca. 1140), before the emergence of professional lawyers, law schools, courtrooms, and universities. It looks more closely at the incipient (early medieval) centuries, when the legal structures, rationales, norms, and practices were just beginning to take shape. As this book explains, the law was a dynamic and fluid process that transformed with time, experience, and necessity. It was a living and breathing organism, created, pronounced, and legitimated across a growing Christian world.