A Study of the Roman and Canon Law Influence upon the nascent Common

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1 The purpose of this project is to reconsider the influence of the leaned law (roman and canon law) upon the nascent common law in England, by means of analyzing the anonymous tract on procedure in ecclesiastical and secular courts which has been called Consuetudines Diversarum Curiarum, written in c. 1230.2 The main research results are summarized in these points.(1) There exist two MSS of the tract. One is the Gonvill and Caius College, Cambridge, 205/111, pp. 409-429. The other is the Cambridge University Library Mm. I.27, ff. 76v-77v. The latter is copied from the former, although the latter lacks those parts of the tracy which deal with ecclesiastical courts. The printed edition of H.G.Richardson & G.O.Sayles is based only on the former, and turns out to be insufficient.(2) There are procedual similarities between the proof by witnesses in ecclesiastical courts and the jury trial in secular courts.(3) By the side of oral proceedings, we notice the use of written instruments in secular courts as well as in ecclesiastical ones.(4) The very existence of the procedual manual of this sort speaks for the demand among the people who were supposed to be concerned with both ecclesiastical and lay courts. We should not overlook the mutual influences between the canon law and the common law in twelfth and thirteenth century England.