Edda Frankot, ‘OF LAWS OF SHIPS AND SHIPMEN’: MEDIEVAL MARITIME LAW AND ITS PRACTICE IN URBAN NORTHERN EUROPE Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press (www.euppublishing.com), 2012. xiv + 223 pp. ISBN 9780748646241. £45.00.

AuthorJ D Ford
Date01 May 2013
Pages269-271
Published date01 May 2013
DOI10.3366/elr.2013.0160
<p>The main title of the book under review is borrowed from a translation of the late thirteenth century <italic>Rôles d'Oléron</italic> that was circulated in Scotland from the middle of the fourteenth century until the late sixteenth century. One of the many irons Angelo Forte still had in the fire at his untimely death was the production of an edition of this important if little known text (84 The Mariner's Mirror 12). On the evidence of Dr Frankot's book, which derives from a doctoral dissertation written under Professor Forte's supervision, no one would be better placed to bring his project to fruition. The surviving medieval manuscripts, along with some of those from the sixteenth century – National Library of Scotland, Acc. 11218/5, ff. 297–300, and Cambridge University Library, Kk.1.5/4, ff. 2–4, are for some reason neglected – are carefully examined and related to versions of the <italic>Rôles d'Oléron</italic> in circulation in other parts of Europe. No clearer outline exists of the complicated development of the sources generally called the laws of Oleron and Wisby.</p> <p>Oddly enough, the translation from which the main title of Dr Frankot's book is borrowed does not appear to have informed the urban practice referred to in the subtitle of her book. Encouraged to examine the rich burgh records of Aberdeen in a “north European” setting, Dr Frankot set out to compare the use of maritime law there with its use in Kampen on the Zuiderzee and Lübeck, Danzig and Reval on the Baltic. That the burgh courts of Aberdeen do not appear to have had direct access to a copy of the <italic>Rôles d'Oléron</italic> or any other written compilation of maritime laws was one of several ways in which it turns out to have differed from the other towns studied. Dr Frankot is driven to the conclusion that, at least so far as the use of maritime law is concerned, medieval Aberdeen is better regarded as part of north-western Europe, though how far it really belongs in that setting will not be known until some north-western towns are studied as thoroughly as the northern towns are here, free from the facile assumption that rules set down in writing must have been followed in practice. Apart from a slight tendency, mostly held in check, to assume that the surviving evidence presents a complete picture of the subject examined, Dr Frankot conducts her research with rigour and sophistication, and she presents it with a degree of precision and lucidity not always found among native speakers of English.</p> <p>So far as northern Europe is...</p>

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