CALL FOR PAPERS: Proclaiming, Affixing, Distributing: Disseminating the Law in Early Modern Europe [2nd COMLAWEU conference] (St Andrews: University of St Andrews, 5-6 MAY 2026) [DEADLINE 31 OCT 2025]

 

Call for Papers

Proclaiming, Affixing, Distributing: Disseminating the Law in Early Modern Europe

The 2^nd 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.