Coutumes de Beauvaisis


The Coutumes of Beauvaisis is a book on medieval French law composed by Philippe de Beaumanoir at the end of the 13th century in Old French prose. The text covers a wide range of topics both on procedural and substantive law and is quite voluminous, which explains its attractiveness to scholars. The bibliography of the Coutumes is large, although it contains mostly articles and only few subject-specific books. The latest edition has been prepared by Amédée Salmon and was published back in 1899–1900, respecting the original old French syntax. It has not been put into modern French, but translations exist in English and Japanese.

Authorship

During a long period of time the author of the text had been falsely identified with Philippe de Rémi, poet and bailli of the Gâtinais, who was renowned for his 20,000 verses of poems including La Manekine, Jehan et Blonde and Salut d’amour. As a result, in XIX and at the beginning of 20th century Philippe was usually described as a prominent person capable both in poetry and law.
However, it is now a well-established fact that Philip the poet was Philippe de Beaumanoir's father

Text and translations