Las Siete Partidas, Volume 5: Underworlds: The Dead, the Criminal, and the Marginalized (Partidas VI and VII) »

Robert I. Burns, S.J., is a senior professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Director of the Institute of Medieval Mediterranean Spain in Playa del Rey, California.

A major thirteenth-century Spanish law code whose tenets can still be found in the state laws of California, Texas, and Louisiana.

Booknews

Burns has edited and added extensive introductory material, with copious notes and bibliography, to the 1931 translation of the great law code of Alfonso X of Castille. Still influential, the law code was used throughout the Spanish colonies, including California, Louisiana, and Texas. The five comfortably-sized volumes are divided into church; government; law; family, merchants, and women; the dead, criminal and marginalized. The code is made up of essays on each law, which provide a rich source for medievalists not only on medieval law and the history of law, but also every area of medieval society and culture as these were experienced in 13th-century Spain. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)