Call for Papers
Proclaiming, Affixing, Distributing:
Disseminating the Law in Early Modern Europe
The 2nd
COMLAWEU conference, 5-6 May 2026, University of St Andrews
Proposals for papers (max. 20 minutes) are invited on the
subject of ‘Proclaiming, Affixing, Distributing: Disseminating the Law in Early
Modern Europe’ to be presented at the second COMLAWEU (Communicating the Law in
Europe, 1500-1750) conference at St Andrews, to be held on Tuesday 5 and
Wednesday 6 May 2025.
Abstracts (max. 350 words) and a short bio (max. 150 words)
are due to Dr Arthur der Weduwen, Principal Investigator of the COMLAWEU
project, by 31 October 2025, at adw7@st-andrews.ac.uk.
This
conference seeks to build on the small but rapidly growing body of work on the
manifold ways in which early modern Europeans could listen to, see, read and
inform themselves of the law in the public and private spaces of their
communities. It will seek to determine how various authorities sought to
disseminate their laws; and how different audiences received or were exposed to
information about the law. We welcome contributions on any part of early modern
Europe or its colonies, within the time frame of c. 1450-1800.
Papers are invited on any aspect of the conference, which
will seek to provide answers to some of the following questions:
·
How
did European authorities disseminate the law within and beyond their territories?
·
What
was the role and relative importance of criers, heralds, messengers, affixers
and other officials tasked with the proclamation and further dissemination of
laws?
·
How
many copies of laws would regularly be distributed, in what forms and to what
audiences? How commonly were laws affixed as physical exemplars, and where
could they be consulted?
·
How
did physical geography, infrastructure, postal routes and the size of urban
communities affect state communication? How different was the communication of
law in cities and villages or rural communities?
·
How
did multiple media interact in the dissemination of political and legal
information?
·
To
what extent did the ceremony of state communication develop over time?
·
To
what extent did news of laws, as well as physical copies of manuscript and
printed texts, travel across jurisdictions?
·
How
did crisis, unrest and war affect the dissemination of the law?
·
How
frequently did acts of communication and dissemination spark unrest or
conflict?
·
To
what extent did copies of laws and other state publications circulate
commercially? In what other forms were they republished or altered?
It is expected that papers presented at the conference will
also be published by the end of 2027 in an edited volume.
Conference context
In early modern Europe it was a
ubiquitous norm that law had to be published to be valid. In his
thirteenth-century Treatise on Law
(part of his Summa Theologiae), Thomas Aquinas considered that the
promulgation of law (‘an ordinance of reason for the common good’) was inherent
to its essence. In early modern Europe, laws were issued and promulgated by a
great variety of political authorities (kings, governors, councils,
representative assemblies, executive bodies and so forth). Most of these
authorities relied on an inherited system of communication that required laws
to be read out (proclaimed) and distributed in handwritten or printed documents.
The extent of these efforts naturally depended on the extent of the jurisdiction
of the issuing authority: edicts issued by the King of France would have to be published
across a country of almost twenty million people, while laws issued by the
Parlement of Bordeaux would be restricted to a much smaller region. Municipal
laws often extended only to a single urban community, as well as any rural
territory owned by the city beyond its walls; at the same time, many pieces of
municipal legislation travelled far and wide, serving as warnings to people in
other jurisdictions, or models to other authorities for their own programme of
legislation. Many people would also have been subject to overlapping
jurisdictions, each with a need to communicate their laws: for instance, a
citizen of seventeenth-century Rotterdam would be faced with ordinances issued
by their town council, but also the local Admiralty, the States of Holland, the
States General, and multiple other administrative and financial bodies.
If most ordinary people were excluded
from the chambers of the state where policy was formulated, they were fully
involved in the enactment of the law, which demanded public communication and
placed the rulers and ruled in shared communal spaces, such as the market
square. The communication of law was steeped in ritual ceremonies, but these
were by no means ceremonies in which only the rulers played an active role. The
announcement of a new edict provided subjects with an occasion to voice their
concerns or disapproval.
The practice of verbal proclamation was rarely sufficient
to reach all of those to whom the law applied. In many towns across Europe, use
was made of town criers, who would sometimes also be charged with the affixing
of copies of new laws at locations where they made their announcements. These
locations were both practical and symbolic, places where many people would
congregate: they generally included the town hall, market squares, churches,
town gates, other notable buildings and busy commercial streets. After the
crier had moved on, affixed copies of the law could be consulted by literate
inhabitants, scrutinised or read out to the illiterate. Many were also
reprinted for commercial distribution.
Affixing the
law was a highly figurative act, as it represented the presence of government
and the threat of the enforcement of order. From the perspective of the
authorities it was also politically perilous. The distinctive style of
ordinances and the prominent locations in the cityscape where they were posted
were chosen by the magistrates for maximum publicity. This meant that ordinances
were often targeted by indignant citizens. Unfortunate town criers could be
abused or assaulted by unreceptive citizens, especially as criers were not
ordinarily accompanied by guards. Citizens could also express their dissent by
counter-posting libels, poems, songs, images or even animal parts in public
spaces. Increasing efforts to communicate the law ensured that it could be
examined, tested or ripped down in protest. Proclaiming and affixing ordinances
could reassure but also embolden an attentive and engaged public.
