Bracton as a Computist
An essoniatus de malo lecti is dispensed from appearing in court for a certain time, to wit, for a year. How is this time to be computed, if in its course there occurs the additional day of a leap-year? If e.g. the year, given to an essoinee, began on January 20th of a leap year, does the year end o...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
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| Published: |
Cambridge University Press
1945
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| In: |
Traditio
Year: 1945, Volume: 3, Pages: 265-305 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (JSTOR) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | An essoniatus de malo lecti is dispensed from appearing in court for a certain time, to wit, for a year. How is this time to be computed, if in its course there occurs the additional day of a leap-year? If e.g. the year, given to an essoinee, began on January 20th of a leap year, does the year end on the next 20th of January (so that the essoinee has a time of 366 days) or on the next 19th of January (so that the essoinee has a time of 365 days, as in a normal year)? Bracton discussed this question, on which there was a lively dispute among English lawyers of his time, in a long chapter of his treatise (fol. 359–360). Everybody who attempted to read this text unprepared, would soon push it aside in despair of finding any sense in this abstruse discussion. In fact Bracton's text has been spoilt by numerous ruthless interpolations which have rendered it entirely unintelligible. Such a text is of eminent value for everybody who is interested in the problem of the Bractonian text, for the process of deterioration is here more evident than elsewhere. Nevertheless nobody has hitherto tried to disentangle the ravelled skein and to reconstruct what Bracton actually wrote. The latest editor of the treatise, Professor Woodbine, has, according to his principle, abstained from emending what he believed to be the best text of our manuscripts. The inevitable result of this conservatism is, that the chapter is in his edition entirely unreadable just as in the older editions. At first sight it may seem hopeless to find a way through the jungle, but a minute and patient examination shows that the genuine Bractonian text may still be traced. We are fortunate enough to possess an unusually rich store of material for our inquiry, and by methodically using it we may confidently hope to reach our goal. |
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| ISSN: | 2166-5508 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Traditio
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0362152900016901 |