Besnier, Répresentation Successorale (1929)

Author(s): Robert Besnier (1903-95)

Title: La Répresentation Successorale en Droit Normand

Remarks:

Besnier was born in Caen, the son of the ancient historian/geographer Maurice Besnier (1873 -- 1933). He received his doctorate in laws there in 1929, and remained at Caen, with an interlude as a cavalry officer (winning the Croix de Guerre in 1940) until in 1944 he left his professorship to take up another at the University of Paris. There he remained until 1977, combining the teaching and study of the law with ancient economic history. In 1935 Besnier published a book La Coutume de Normandie: histoire externe and over the years provided many articles, most of which are listed in the festschrift published in his honour in 1980. La Répresentation Successorale en Droit Normand is an in-depth study of a major preoccupation of Norman law and culture. It has not received the attention it deserves from Anglophone historians in its treatment of the Casus Regis and the "Mauvaise Coutume" used to justify King John's usurping of the inheritance of his nephew Prince Arthur of Brittany (d. 1203). The book is in three parts: the first treating the law of inheritance in ancient Greece, Rome, and amongst the Germanic peoples and Franks; the second, the history of representation in successions in Normandy; and the third, the theory underlying practice in the Duchy. Edition(s) (this copy in bold): 1929 Provenance of this copy: St John Robilliard Collection

Further reading:

Hommage à Robert Besnier: Professeur honoraire à l'Université de Droit, d'Économie et de Sciences sociales de Paris (Paris, 1980). J. Imbert, obituary, Revue historique de droit français et étranger, lxxiii (1995), iii-iv.