ABSTRACT
Properly grasping the noun 'forced share's' range of meanings is essential to understanding the philosophical foundations of the forced share. This chapter focuses principally on the role played by the canon lawyers in appropriating the old Romanist vocabulary and deploying it in the very different world of the high and late Middle Ages as a means of justifying the revival of the practice of the forced share. It begins by considering the noun pietas and focuses principally on the growth and development of an idea and a way of transmitting wealth intergenerationally. The chapter then looks at the ways in which medieval writers, particularly Scholastic philosophers and canon lawyers, described the family more generally. The focus is on the theological, philosophical, and legal texts produced in the European universities and law schools that emerged beginning in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
