Millenaristic Equity. Theological Order and Legal Faith
-
Cristina Costantini
Cristina Costantini is Associate Professor of Private Comparative Law at the University of Perugia. She is member of AIDC (Associazione Italiana di Diritto Comparato), AIDEL (Associazione Italiana di Diritto e Letteratura), Selden Society (Faculty of Law, Queen and Westfield College, London), ESSE (The European Society for the Study of English) and AIA (Associazione Italiana di Anglistica). Her main fields of research are the history of English legal system, the construction of legal traditions, the intellectual assessment of the liminal thresholds within Humanities (Law and Literature, Law and Philosophy, Law and Religion). Among her publications, “Representing Law. Narrative Practices, Poetic Devices, Visual Signs and the Aesthetics of the Common Law Mind”, in
Liminal Discourses. Subliminal Tensions in Law and Literature , eds. Daniela Carpi, Jeanne Gaakeer (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013): 27–36, “The Keepers of Traditions. The English Common Lawyers and the Presence of Law”,Comparative Law Review (2010): 1–12;La Legge e il Tempio (Roma: Carocci, 2007), “Katechontic Elizabeth: The Physical Repository of Sovereignty through Law, Literature and Iconography”,Performing the Renaissance Body. Essays on Drama, Law and Representation , Sidia Fiorato, John Drakakis eds (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016): 229–246.
Abstract
The essay aims to prospect an original understanding of Equity Jurisdiction at the intersection of Law, Literature and Theology, theoretically based on a critical reassessment of E. Kantorowicz’s and E.L. Santner’s arguments. In this perspective, the Author uncovers the tensional metamorphoses, which ontologically affected and transmuted Equity from Medieval foundations to Renaissance reformed settlement, in order to fulfil a process of mystical secularization. Moving from a deeper appreciation of Chancellor’s figure and institutional role, the new intellectual vision here proposed brings to the light the historical and symbolical relevance of the Chancellor’s two bodies, which mimically reflected the dualities embedded in the normative figure of the King. The main purpose is to demonstrate how Equity Jurisdiction was charged with an eschatological significance and was attracted into millenaristic visions and narratives. Equity definitely constituted the salvific seam between Theological Order and Legal Faith. Meaningful arguments, in order to support the main thesis, comes from Medieval Literature, and especially from the spectacularized allegorical representation enacted by verses of Piers Plowman, where the contending claims of Common Law and Equity are christologically reinterpreted. Other foundative elements emerge from the valorization of the connection between Equity’s strategies and Elizabethan Apocalypticism. The Equity jurisdiction was a powerful device in order to gives voice and expression to the katechontic mission embodied by Queen Elizabeth I. The bond between Sovereignty and Equity was newly attracted into an eschatological plan.
About the author
Cristina Costantini is Associate Professor of Private Comparative Law at the University of Perugia. She is member of AIDC (Associazione Italiana di Diritto Comparato), AIDEL (Associazione Italiana di Diritto e Letteratura), Selden Society (Faculty of Law, Queen and Westfield College, London), ESSE (The European Society for the Study of English) and AIA (Associazione Italiana di Anglistica). Her main fields of research are the history of English legal system, the construction of legal traditions, the intellectual assessment of the liminal thresholds within Humanities (Law and Literature, Law and Philosophy, Law and Religion). Among her publications, “Representing Law. Narrative Practices, Poetic Devices, Visual Signs and the Aesthetics of the Common Law Mind”, in Liminal Discourses. Subliminal Tensions in Law and Literature, eds. Daniela Carpi, Jeanne Gaakeer (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013): 27–36, “The Keepers of Traditions. The English Common Lawyers and the Presence of Law”, Comparative Law Review (2010): 1–12; La Legge e il Tempio (Roma: Carocci, 2007), “Katechontic Elizabeth: The Physical Repository of Sovereignty through Law, Literature and Iconography”, Performing the Renaissance Body. Essays on Drama, Law and Representation, Sidia Fiorato, John Drakakis eds (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016): 229–246.
©2016 by De Gruyter
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Focus
- Equity and the Resources of Critique: Part I
- “Where the Shoe Pinches”: True Equity in Trollope’s The Warden
- Equity as a Question of Decorum and Manners: Conscience as Vision
- Millenaristic Equity. Theological Order and Legal Faith
- “… and if, in time, equity…”. An Exploration of the Time(s) of Equity Diagrammed through Image
- “From their Graves”: The Theme of Burial and the Work of the Modern Jurist in F. W. Maitland’s Equity also the Forms of Action at Common Law
- Research
- Jodi Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper: New Definitions of Human Dignity in Novel and Film
- Intertextuality and Parody of Law in The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien: a Literary and a Linguistic Reading
- Book Review
- Gary Watt: Shakespeare’s Acts of Will: Law, Testament and Properties of Performance
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Focus
- Equity and the Resources of Critique: Part I
- “Where the Shoe Pinches”: True Equity in Trollope’s The Warden
- Equity as a Question of Decorum and Manners: Conscience as Vision
- Millenaristic Equity. Theological Order and Legal Faith
- “… and if, in time, equity…”. An Exploration of the Time(s) of Equity Diagrammed through Image
- “From their Graves”: The Theme of Burial and the Work of the Modern Jurist in F. W. Maitland’s Equity also the Forms of Action at Common Law
- Research
- Jodi Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper: New Definitions of Human Dignity in Novel and Film
- Intertextuality and Parody of Law in The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien: a Literary and a Linguistic Reading
- Book Review
- Gary Watt: Shakespeare’s Acts of Will: Law, Testament and Properties of Performance
