The Saxon Mirror
Subtitle: A Sachsenspiegel of the Fourteenth Century (Middle Ages Series)
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Published: June 1999
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 263
ISBN-13: 9780812234879
Subjects: European history: c 500 to c 1500; Jurisprudence & General Issues; c 1000 CE to c 1500; Legal History; History; History - General History; Law; Europe; Medieval; Europe - Germany; Germany; General; Sachsenspiegel; Sources
First sentence: THE EMPEROR PROMULGATED THIS law in Mainz with the support of the princes.
Description: The Sachsenspiegel, or Saxon Mirror, compiled in 1235 by Eike von Repgow, may be said to mark the beginning of vernacular German jurisprudence. For the first time, Maria Dobozy offers an English translation of this influential lawbook, the oldest and most important set of customary laws in the German language.

The reception of the lawbook was vast. Extant in more than four hundred manuscripts, it was rapidly adapted as the paradigm for lawbooks in all the German territories, including the Netherlands, as well as in Poland, Ukraine, Hungary, and Bohemia. These codes of law became the standard for over three hundred years.

The Sachsenspiegel contains a compilation of the legal practices at the time in Saxony, an ethnically mixed territory, and encompasses the legal customs and procedures that regulated the daily life of peasants and landlords. It is a multidimensional resource for anyone seeking insight into German and Central European culture.