With the support of Prof. Dario Mantovani's Chair of Law, Culture and Society in Ancient Rome, the École française de Rome is organizing a research training workshop on the sources of Roman law, to be held in June 2021.
The call for applications is open until December 7, 2020.
Law was an essential component of the Roman world. The study of legal texts not only brings to light an argumentative logic specific to the law and identifies the values governing the decisions of jurists and legislators, but also enables us to get closer to a number of historical realities. These varied sources (literary, epigraphic, papyrological) reveal the evolution of legal thought, the principles of the law and how it was applied. They also reveal economic data, lifestyles and social practices. Legal texts thus constitute a rich and useful source of documentation for historians, which is in part waiting to be exploited. However, a question of method arises: to what extent can legal texts be considered a reliable mirror of economic, social and political realities? Above all, how can we find our way through the variety of sources, genres and editions of legal texts?
Founded by Jean-Louis Ferrary, Dario Mantovani and Hélène Ménard in 2017, the workshop aims to familiarize participants with the main texts of Roman law and the methodological issues they raise, based on their direct and ongoing reading.
