Medieval Hostages, Contract Theory, and the History of International Law - Legal History Workshop with Adam Kosto, Columbia University February 10, 2012

Legal History Workshop to be held in 55 Mondale Hall

Adam Kosto is a Professor of History at Columbia University where he specializes in the institutional history of medieval Europe, with a focus on Catalonia and the Mediterranean. He received his B.A. from Yale (1989), an M.Phil. from Cambridge (1990), and his Ph.D. from Harvard (1996). He is the author of Making Agreements in Medieval Catalonia: Power, Order, and the Written Word, 1000-1200 (Cambridge UP, 2001) and the forthcoming Hostages in the Middle Ages (Oxford UP, 2012), and co-editor of The Experience of Power in Medieval Europe , 950–1350 (Ashgate, 2005), Charters, Cartularies, and Archives: The Preservation and Transmission of Documents in the Medieval West (PIMS, 2002), and the forthcoming Documentary Practices and the Laity in the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge UP, 2012).

In the European Middle Ages, as in premodern societies generally, hostages were given, not taken. They were a form of personal surety used to guarantee agreements ranging from interstate treaties to wartime undertakings to financial transactions. The present paper explores two aspects of medieval hostages of interest to legal historians. The first part attempts to understand the logic of the medieval hostage-as-guarantee with reference to modern scholarship on contract theory, in particular work on credible commitments. While the analogy between the medieval hostage and, for example, modern sunk costs quickly runs aground, such comparisons are nonetheless fruitful. The second part of the paper looks to the writings of medieval canon lawyers for the origins of the objections to premodern hostageship that contributed to its decline in the Early Modern era; it then demonstrates how this decline led the Nuremberg tribunals to ground its decisions on hostages in a flawed understanding of the history of the institution.

For questions, or to receive a copy of the precirculated paper, contact Meghan Schwartz at [email protected] or at 612-625-6181.
Sponsored by the Law School and the Center for Medieval Studies at the University of Minnesota

Official Website: http://www.law.umn.edu/law_history/index.html