ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the first French coutumiers, which were written in the vernacular in northern France in approximately the second half of the thirteenth century, because the territorial attributions in these texts have been a main source for the customary map of France. It argues that the picture of thirteenth-century customary law in France is more than a map of regional custom. The authors of the coutumiers recognized commonalities and also created them as the coutumiers were read and even adopted outside the region of their original affiliation and in fact, participated in the formation a French 'common law' in the thirteenth century. The development of written custom is less related to fractured regionalism, and part of the consolidation of central power and a vehicle toward legal harmonization. While the coutumiers discusses both the customs of the region and the general customs of the lay courts, the cartographies are inevitably fated to represent distinct and discrete bodies of custom.
