Since their collection by the brothers Grimm, the late medieval Weistümer (local legal codes) of Germany and France have fascinated historians. Scholars long saw in them precious evidence about Germanic oral tradition surviving from the early Middle Ages. With their vivid descriptions of peasants declaring their law to their lords, and with their curious local customs, Weistümer survived postwar debunking of their Ur-Germanness and helped found anthropological studies of oral versus literate cultures into the 1980s. Drawing on the Münster and Zurich schools of pragmatic literacy, Simon Teuscher’s meticulous and deeply informed study now requires us to reassess almost everything found in older discussions of Weistümer. By reading them against other genres of legal record from the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries, Teuscher shows not only how Weistümer themselves, but also the idea that local law rested on immemorial custom, emerged only in the fifteenth century, primarily through the practices of literate actors. Indeed, the more a Weistum emphasizes ceremonies and ancient customs, the later its composition is likely to be.

Lords’ Rights thus makes a significant contribution to debates among medievalists about literacy, law, and local society, but also addresses broader issues about records’ functions that are of great interest to Renaissance scholars and beyond. Teuscher consistently rejects the oral-literate duality when applied to medieval and early modern Europe. Instead, he examines how law was known by reading not only Weistümer, but also charters, arbitrations, and witness depositions (Kundschaften) produced in a politically and linguistically diverse zone stretching from northeastern Savoy to Zurich. Along with their contents, he considers the legal and political context of records’ production, the evolving material forms they took, and the uses they experienced when produced later during the course of litigation.

At the heart of Teuscher’s interpretation lies a series of parallel transformations. Around 1300, he argues, rural law in the region emerged through negotiation, primarily among the petty nobility who mostly administered it; witness testimony from a few weighty individuals (knights, priests, notaries) reported the consensus of their deliberations, usually in charters addressing one issue. Such witnesses usually pointed to laws’ origins in the specific actions of particular individuals. Beginning in the fourteenth century in the tightly administered domains of Savoy, this approach gave way to new procedures that spread across the region. Witnesses still testified, but usually individually and in much larger numbers, often hundreds. Their testimony often responded to pre-drafted questions from lordly administrators about whether they had seen a particular actor exerting a certain right, and was recorded in unauthenticated rolls for reading to the court. Later, such testimony migrated to codices, where it could be indexed and quantified in chancelleries before being reported to judges. After the 1450s, full-fledged Weistümer conveyed comprehensive statutes for specific places, notably where lordship was complex or had changed. Although they purported to record testimony from peasants at ceremonial Weisungen, Weistümer actually built on older legal documents from the chancelleries of the lords involved. Around 1500, Weistümer migrated away from their communities, becoming texts for commentary in relation to other records in administrative offices.

Whereas earlier records of rural law were characterized by “narrative minimalism” (121), Teuscher demonstrates how later genres and especially Weistümer deployed “literary shaping” (125) to increase their legitimacy. Most important were their claims to represent immemorial tradition that was not made, but only reported by the peasants and scribes involved, and that such tradition formed a coherent system that paralleled the learned law the same scribes were deploying in their chancelleries. In short, Weistümer were literate confabulations both in their alleged creation and in the law they claimed to convey. In 1300 as in 1500, Teuscher shows, rural law operated through a documentary system with interlocking textual, material, and social forms, of which Weistümer were one. Change thus consisted in transition from one oral-literate system to another.

This short review cannot cover every dimension of the transitions that Teuscher reveals. The material form of records (from charter to roll to book), their narrative logics, modes of document usage, and many other questions receive precise attention. Teuscher draws examples from diverse locations and times for each of his specific arguments, often giving the book a slightly abstract flavor, but his systematic analysis of important early Weistümer from Lausanne and Romainmôtier provides compelling historical specificity. Philip Grace’s translation is fluid and precise; however, a note indicating that several chapters are rearranged from the German text — often providing more vivid narration — would be appropriate.