The Crisis of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth-Century English Political Thought within the Scope of Lex Animata and Lex Facit Regem Principles

Medieval perception of English kingship as an office was definitively formed by two distinct legal sources for legitimacy in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. On the one hand, the revival of Roman Law tradition in the twelfth century became the basis of king-centered governance with reference to the conceptualisation of lex animata which places the King above Law by depicting the ruler as “Living Law”. On the other hand, English Common Law tradition developed in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries created a strong reference point for Medieval English lawyers to put constraints on the arbitrary exercise of power by the kings. This approach became concrete in the maxim of Lex Facit Regem (Law makes the king) formulated by thirteenth-century English lawyer Henry Bracton. Within this context, this study gives a general outline of English political thought in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries around the notions of lex animata and lex facit regem. It argues that the tensions caused by two distinct notions about kingly governance remained unsolved and continued to become the source of theoretical and practical political crises in Late Medieval England