This is an examination of how medieval people at all social levels thought about law, justice and politics, as well as their role in society. The author provides both a history of judicial developments in the 13th and 14th centuries and contributes to the understanding of intellectual history in the period. Each chapter focuses on a different facet of legal culture and experiences, and enables the reader to enter the realms of both perception and reality. Taken cumulatively, they combine to offer a picture of the state of legal consciousness: an ideological context in which to set the political and judicial developments that were occurring during the two centuries of tremendous social change.