Summary Of Fulbert's Letter To Susan Yumbert

Letters were the principle means of influencing actions and opinions and of communicating with people at a distance in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Many valuable insights can be detected from medieval letters about the practice of legal history, most of which appears to be based on how law has exceeded Roman and canon law and developed on the kind of assumptions about what is right or wrong.

Susan Reynold’s argument that before 1100 law has traditionally been seen as based on ordeals and judgement of God is reflected in most of the letters written by Fulbert, with various references to “God” and “divine law”. His letter reinforces this in 1018, where Fulbert wrote to Bishop Adalbero of Laon complaining that it was necessary to take vigorous measures against the murderers of Evrardus by warning the bishop that if they were not punished then “what remains except for the supreme Judge himself in his furious wrath to destroy both judges and criminals with unprecedented cruelty and death?” What this suggests is that the type of law that was enforced was derived from judgement of God as a means for imposing strict punishment to suit the crime. However, over the years his letters expose a development from this. For example, while in his letter to …show more content…
For example, Fulbert was “one of the natural leaders in the French church and kingdom” and the frequency with which he was consulted provides that judgements were conducted between those who were highly regarded in thinking about what would be just and right in the case at issue. Therefore, as Reynolds argues, “this kind of law is not law at all, but it seems to serve the purposes of what we call law in so far as it is authoritative and