The Big Picture or the "Real" Context in the Twelfth Century

Justinian, Digest 1.1.1, Torino, Biblioteca nazionale E.I.1.C.4

Relationship of the Ius commune and Local legislation

Ken Pennington, "The Birth of the Ius commune: King Roger II’s Legislation," Rivista internazionale del diritto comune 17 (2006) 1-40

Ken Pennington, "The Practical Use of Roman Law in the Early Twelfth-Century," Handlung und Wissenschaft: Die Epistemologie der Praktischen Wissenschaften im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert, edd. Matthias Lutz-Bachmann and Alexander Fidora (Wissenskultur und Gesellschaftlicher Wandel 29; Berlin: Akademie Verlag 2008) 11-31

Ken Pennington, "The 'Big Bang': Roman Law in the Early Twelfth-Century," Rivista internazionale di diritto comune 18 (2007) 43-70.

Chris Wickham, Courts and Conflict in Twelfth-Century Tuscany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) 2 'It can, of course, be argued that law was irrelevant . . . and that Romanist scholarship was an almost entirely abstract science, a set of commentaries on a quasi-holy text, . . . as divorced from practical knowledge as any Parisian theological treatise.'

Ken Pennington, "Learned Law, Droit Savant, Gelehrtes Recht: The Tyranny of a Concept," Rivista internazionale di diritto comune 5 (1994) 197-209