Social and Political Context
The period from 1234 to 1348 saw further social as well as legal change in WestÂern Europe. Population growth slackened and by the closing decades of the thirteenth century had come to a halt.
There was probably some fall in populaÂtion early in the fourteenth century, even before the demographic disaster of the Black Death. City populations continued to outpace rural populations, and the bourgeoisie almost everywhere greatly enhanced its social and political power. The upper ranks of the urban population—well-to-do merchants, craftsÂmen, and professional people, especially lawyers—were beginning to acquire real influence in politics and society. The growth of the size, wealth, and power of cities meant that lawyers, including canon lawyers, played increasingly cenÂtral roles in society and politics, for the lawyers as a group enjoyed a special status in urban society. Their skills and expertise became ever more critical for commercial entrepreneurs in the cities, and both ecclesiastical and royal adÂministrators also depended increasingly on them for advice and counsel.13Growing activism of municipal authorities with respect to sexual behavior and marriage was notable during this century. Municipal statutes dealt with sexual matters much more often. The authorities of towns and communes asÂserted their competence to regulate prostitution, to punish adultery and sodÂomy, and to determine the property consequences of divorce and separation. The statutes that embodied these assertions of municipal power and authority were themselves often redacted by lawyers for municipal governments, cases arising under these statutes were prosecuted by lawyers serving city authoriÂties, and the results of prosecutions were determined with increasing freÂquency by judges trained in one or both of the learned laws.14
The Black Death ended an era in several senses. The death of Johannes AnÂdrea, the most important canonist of his generation, and the passing a few years later of his younger and even more able contemporary among the civilians, Bar- tolus of Sassoferrato (1314-57), left a void that the following generation proved unable to fill.15 Both population and prosperity suffered from the effects of the great plague, which for three centuries continued to return at frequent interÂvals with devastating results.16