ABSTRACT
A representative and extremely useful synopsis of medieval corporation theory is the long excerpt from Gierke's works, entitled "The Idea of Corporation" (in 1961: pp. 611-26). Ernst H. Kantorowicz's profound and fascinating study (1957), though primarily concerned with the intricacies of medieval juristic and theological thought and speculation on the nature of kingship as a corporation sole, is a mine of inspiration from an anthropological point of view. I must add the translation by Ernest Barker of Gierke's Natural Law and the Theory of Society, 1500-1800 (1934). There is much to be learned from the translator's review and exegesis in his introduction, but at the abstruse level of this work, Gierke's analysis of medieval corporation theories is too far removed from our ethnographic data to be applicable to the anthropological problems of corporate group structure.
