Talk:Rolls of Oléron

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In french, Rôle, or rolls, means register, book of recording Archie

At what point did the historagrahy re provenance of these laws change, I wonder?

The article states "They were promulgated by Eleanor of Aquitaine in about 1160" and the source for this is the book "Keevil, John Joyce (1957). Medicine and the Navy,1200-1900,vol.1: 1200-1649. Livingstone". At least I assume this is the source, the cite is given once at the end of the paragraph, for the whole paragraph.

Earlier writers did not suss this. Travers Twiss in the the "Black Book of the Admiralty" (see here describes three theories regarding the source of the Rolls, and says

"The French theory [of 17th century jurist Etienne de] Cleirac attributes the compilation of the Rolls of Oleron to Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine, but Cleirac has cited no proofs in support of it... Cleirac does not state by what person or from what sources the Duchess Eleanor caused the judgments to be compiled..."

and so forth. The other theories he cites are that they were compiled under the authority Otho, Duke of Saxony, while he was governor of Aquitaine, or that King Richard I of England had them compiled.

The Black Book is old, but Twiss was a considerable person in his time, and he cites sources for the the other theories. I would like to see a source to the effect "Modern research has disproven these old theories, and we now know for certain that Eleanor was the source" or something. Otherwise I'm a little nervous that Keevil just chose the Eleanor theory. Keevil is not on line and I can't read him, and while I do believe (and am compelled to accept per WP:AGF even if I didn't believe it) that the source does indeed say that Keevil believes it was Eleanor, Keevil could be wrong. I'd like to see his refs. Herostratus (talk) 19:25, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

I trolled through JSTOR a bit. One of the more recent references seems to be Timothy J. Runyan, "The Rolls of Oleron and the Admiralty Court in Fourteenth Century England". His conclusion was that "it is certain that [Otto and Eleanor] may be discounted, and Richard's part is highly suspect". If you can access Heebøll-Holm's "Ports, Piracy and Maritime War" in Google Books, pp. 130–133 discusses current theories of their origin (n.b. he uses the French spelling, Rôles d'Oléron): Krieger's Ursprung und Wurzeln der Roles d'Oleron attributes their creation to one or more of the European guilds of merchants and mariners, rather than to an English royal authority, particularly as they barely mention the king and were not incorporated into English law until 1351. Heebøll-Holm also says that "Ward and other historians assume an origin for the law in the Mediterranean sea laws, the Lex Rhodia, and the Consolate del Mare." There is some evidence (the Fasciculus de superioritate maris of 1339) that attributes their authorship to Richard; according to Heebøll-Holm, Kreiger went to some length to reject this, and Runyan also says "Nothing in [the Fasciculus] is convincing". Another paper cites an unpublished M.A. thesis by James Shephard (Université de Poitiers, 1983), the subject of which is the origins of the Rolls.

This business about transmission via the Maritime Assizes of the Kingdom of Jerusalem strikes me as entirely too cute, and perhaps Keevil's conceit; I don't see it mentioned in any of these more modern sources. Choess (talk) 04:09, 14 April 2016 (UTC)