Even though the LF came to occupy a remarkable place in the most recent debates on feudalism, the only English translation currently available is the one offered by Lord Clyde in his edition of Sir Thomas Craig’s Jus Feudale (1934), which today appears obsolete in many aspects.¹ This book aims therefore to provide on the one hand a useful Latin text and, on the other one, an up-to-date English translation based on Lehmann’s 1896 edition of the vulgata (V1), the most widely diffused and cited among historians. As reference points, however, other editions have been considered: the vulgata edited by Eduard Osenbruggen in 1840 (V2) and translated into Dutch, in 2016, by Johannes E. Spruit and Jeroen Chorus, and the one offered in anastatic reprint by Mario Montorzi in 1991 (V3), which includes the glossa ordinaria.² To highlight textual developments and inconsistencies concerning some problematic passages, some manuscript evidence, regarding the intermediate recensions of the LF, have also been considered in the footnote apparatus to integrate and elucidate V1 and its translation.

In the Latin text, the principal divergences with V2 are reported in the footnotes; on some points, I have preferred V2 over V1, inserting the modifications in square brackets and explaining my choice in the footnote. V3 is taken into consideration to clarify some particularly doubtful passages and as the main reference for the glossa ordinaria. When the footnoted divergences imply a change in the overall meaning of the Latin text, the corresponding translation is footnoted in the English text. This means that, with some patience, the reader can also extrapolate the text and a working English translation of V2 too and, perhaps more importantly, the different rubrication, which is outlined in a synoptic table (see Appendix 4). Whilst V1 has book 1 subdivided into twenty-six titles and book 2 in fifty-seven, V2 has respectively twenty-eight and fifty-eight titles, as do V3 and, in general, the modern printed editions of the vulgata preceding Lehmann’s.

Readers should be aware that these divergences are not the only ones, since slightly different versions of the vulgata were and are available.³ Therefore, the texts that follow and the explanatory footnotes are far from representing or discussing an exhaustive exposition of all these variants. They are meant to be useful tools to explore the Lombard ‘books of fiefs’, their principal meanings and problematic points, to give a glimpse at how slight variations, sometimes relevant for the interpretation of the text, existed and continued to exist and be discussed throughout the modern era.

Appendices 1–3 include texts that have been chosen for their relevance in the feudal law tradition, as explained in the introduction. Whilst it is evident that the subdivision of the capitula extraordinaria into two separate batches attributed respectively to Ardizone and Baraterius does not reflect the actual tradition of those chapters, all perhaps collected by Ardizone in the early thirteenth century, I have opted to maintain this distinction for the sake of clarity, as they are still today generally cited following Lehmann’s edition. Both the capitula extraordinaria by Ardizone (see Appendix 1) and Baraterius (see Appendix 2) are occasionally amended in light of V2 and ms. Vienna 2094, with all the additions, including the headings, in square brackets. Finally, Appendix 3 contains the much discussed edictum de beneficiis by Emperor Conrad II (1037), broadly described in the introduction, the translation of which rests on the edition available in the Monumenta Germaniae Historica.

Besides the synoptic table, which highlights the main divergences in the rubrication between V1, V2, and Ant., I believed it useful to provide a glossary to explain the meaning, potentially unclear, of some terms and expressions that an audience not acquainted with high medieval Italy and its sources might find difficult to understand or contextualise.