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’s discussion of how ‘English’ judges engaged with moral theology must , by necessity, follow different lines from those discussing continental judges. The thicket of historiographical assumptions and myths which have grown up around the common law, emphasising its isolation, particularism and even ‘native purity’, demand a treatment of their own. Thus, before one can even approach the medieval law itself, one must consider exactly what historians mean when they talk about medieval justice and medieval mercy. To offer a history of medieval justice
creative adaptation provided by the Bible, especially the Old Testament, within early medieval law, liturgy and religious practice. In a happy turn of phrase characteristic of Mayke’s remarkable feel for language, she described this as an ‘elective affinity, based on a perceived similarity and continuity between the biblical past and the present’.9 The cultural transformation that such absorption of the Bible into early medieval thought entailed was further developed in relation to Carolingian politics in other articles, such as her classic studies of Hrabanus Maurus and
taken. 11 ‘Originators of heresy’ meaning originators of particular heresies, as Mani of Manichaeism. 12 Compurgators, used extensively in medieval law, were asked to attest that they believed the accused to have sworn truly, rather than attesting directly on the facts of the matter themselves. However, the first clause here suggests that, in the case of heresy, there was an element of factual attestation. 13 Allusion to the stipulation