How did medieval lawyers live?

Answer 1

Medieval lawyers were either clerical or secular. Those who were clerical presumably lead rather simple lives, though there were surely a few who did not.

The secular lawyers were well paid, and were able to live the lives of moderately wealthy people. They would have had to live near the courts, which meant in or very near cities or major towns. They would typically have had a number of servants, good quality clothing and food, and a comfortable home.

Law became a formal profession with rather strict educational requirements during the last four centuries of the Middle Ages.

Answer 2

no.

Answer:

They certainly did.

In Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" one of the travelers is a Man of Law (a lawyer). In the those days (the fourteenth century ) lawyers were already portrayed as busy-bodies, talkers and meddlers.

At that time in England, lawyers worked out of societies known as the Inns of Court (essentially law schools). There were Courts of Chancery, the Kings Bench and the Exchequer as well as Courts of Common Law. Students wishing to become lawyers had to pass through one of the ten Inns of Chancery (essentially pre-law schools) before being admitted to the Inns of Court. Judges came from the more elite Sargeants' Inns

Answer 3

There were two kinds of lawyers in the Middle Ages, ecclesiastical and secular. The ecclesiastical lawyers were members of the clergy.

In order to be a secular lawyer, a person had to achieve a high level of education. At the same time, this was not a profession that would have attracted a peer or land owning member of the nobility away from his properties. That being the case, it would have been most probable that a lawyer would be either a younger member of a noble family or a member of wealthy family of the middle class.

Answer 4

We really have to divide Europe into parts to answer this question, as training was very different in the West than it was in the Byzantine Empire. And perhaps we should remember that parts of Europe were still prehistoric during the Early Middle Ages, so we do not have information on them at all.

In the Byzantine Empire:

The primary education was state run, and, apart from the first century or so of the Middle Ages was entirely in Greek. Universities existed in a number of the cities of the Byzantine Empire, and the University of Constantinople existed during the entire time, having opened in 425 and operating until 1453.

In Western Europe: About the time of the fall of the West Roman Empire, and the century or two following, Germanic law was maintained by memorization, and the lawyers and judges were trained orally. Roman law of the same period was written, and a lawyer would probably have been trained by Church organizations, such as monasteries.

During the Early Middle Ages, as Roman and Germanic legal systems influenced each other more and more, legal codes all came to be written. Most of the primary education a lawyer of this time might have had, would probably have been at a cathedral school or monastery. A small number of state run primary schools existed, even as early as the eighth century. Higher education of lawyers would probably have consisted of more training at Church schools or on the job training.

The High Middle Ages and Late Middle Ages saw progressive increases in the numbers of primary and secondary schools. There was also progressively more diversity in they ways they were conducted, as independent schools opened teaching in the vernacular languages. Lawyers, however, would probably still have had their early education at Church organizations, because the law, like the Church, was conducted in Latin, and education in other languages would have been given to people on different career paths. Universities began to open during this time, and they provided higher education for lawyers. Universities were run in three different ways, by the Church, by the state, or by students and teachers on a more or less commercial basis. Lawyers might have graduated from any of them.

There are a couple of observations I would make. One is that we often hear of lawyers who were clergy. While it is doubtless true that many, possibly most, lawyers were priests or monks, we should not assume that a person described as clergy was in fact formally part of a religious community. In some times, any person who could read had legal claim to the benefits of clergy, and the words clerk and cleric were not easily separated.

Another observation I would make is that we have poor records of the schools of the Early Middle Ages. We know that the Medical School at Salerno was formed from earlier schools that moved to Salerno during the Age of Migrations (380-700), and I would not assume there were no schools teaching lawyers of the times. The West Roman Empire did not suddenly collapse and all need for lawyers vanish. In fact, the Senate of the West Roman Empire continued meeting until at least 603. So there may have been law schools in the Early Middle Ages, of which we have no record.

Answer 5

by eating potatoes.