7th-9th April 2010: Wim Decock on Law & Literature

LAW AND LITERATURE IN THE RENAISSANCE

This seminary invites students to investigate the origins of ‘Law & Humanities’ in Renaissance humanism. This variegated movement started among professional jurists on the Italian peninsular who were fascinated by the culture of Antiquity, the beauty of the pristine language of the Romans, and the classical ideal of the virtuous and learned citizen. Soon, jurists across Europe would try to imitate this inspiring model of the uomo universale, thereby laying the foundations of legal history, law and literature, and the study of the larger political and sociological context in which the law operates.

1. BACK TO THE ORIGINS OF LAW AND THE HUMANITIES

The first lesson will give students an overview of some important characteristics of legal humanism, starting with renowned humanists like Petrarca and gradually moving towards the reception of Italian humanism in France with jurists like Budé. These humanist lawyers’ passion for literature and history will be highlighted, as well as their ambiguous relationship with traditional legal education.

- P. Stein, Legal Humanism and Legal Science, Tijdschrift voor rechtsgeschiedenis, 54 (1986), p. 297-306

2. LOVE AND CONTRACTS IN LEGAL HUMANISM

In the second lesson students will have the chance to read love poetry by the Italian humanist Giovanni G. Pontano and fragments of a novel on Cupid the Jurist by Étienne Forcadel, a law professor from Toulouse. In both instances, it will be shown how the humanist jurists mixed their passion for classical literature with their knowledge of Roman and canon law.

- G. G. Pontano (1429-1503), Eridanus 1.9

- E. Forcadel (1519-1578), Cupido Jurisperitus, cap. 2-3

[see forthcoming papers by W. Decock]

3. LYING AND POLITICS IN LEGAL HUMANISM

The third lesson will concentrate on the humanists’ concern with politics and reason of state (raggione di stato). Through the reading of fragments taken from the book On Politics written by Justus Lipsius we will see how the humanists tried to come to terms with the political views that had been developed by Machiavelli. We will address such questions as whether lying and deceit are allowed in politics.

- J. Lipsius, Politica. Six books of politics or political instruction. Edited with translation and introduction by Jan Waszink, Assen 2004, p. 84-104 and p. 507-533 (odd pages)

WIM DECOCK'S CV:

Wim Decock (°1983) graduated as a classicist at the Catholic University of Leuven (lic. summa cum laude 2005).

He went on to participate in an interdisciplinary research project on European Legal Cultures, financed by the European Commission (6th Framework Program).

As a Marie Curie Early Stage Training Fellow he stayed at the Max Planck Institut für europäische Rechtsgeschichte in Frankfurt am Main (2006-2007), the Istituto Italiano di Scienze Umane in Florence (2007-2008), and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (2008-2009) in Paris. He was also granted a scholarship at the Academia Belgica in Rome (2007).

He is currently a fellow of the Flemish Fund for Scientific Research preparing a PhD on the emergence of modern contract doctrine with the scholastics of the renaissance period.