Maarten Klink is working on a dissertation with the working title 'Private law in Medieval Political Thought: The legal concept of prescription'.
The influence of Roman law on medieval political thought has been enormous. This holds true for Roman public law but interestingly also for Roman private law. A figure of private law that has yet received insufficient scholarly attention is the prescriptio. Although not an unproblematic concept, prescriptio could create legitimate authority out of mere power, and as such it was regularly invoked by conflicting political actors in the Middle Ages. What role did this concept, which especially in the Anglophone world has ever remained politically relevant, play during the Middle Ages? And how did it obtain this role?