Beatrice Pasciuta returned to the Robbins Collection Research Center this past summer to continue her insightful legal research as a Senior Robbins Fellow. A legal historian and professor of legal history at the law school at the University of Palermo, Italy, she also directs a research group on multicultural and multi-confessional legal writing and power circulation in the Norman Kingdom of Sicily.
Pasciuta’s research seeks a greater understanding of legal multiculturalism and its history. She is currently studying how the coexistence of different religions and legal systems might have worked, starting from the unique situation of the Kingdom of Sicily under Norman rule. By studying the Christian, Jewish and Muslim populations, the Latin, Greek and Arabic languages, the Roman Catholic, Byzantine, Muslim and Jewish religions, Roman law, canon law, Byzantine law, and Islamic law, Pascuita wishes to understand how all these populations coexisted in a complex system. Pasciuta explains that we still see traces and evidence of this multiculturalism today in Sicily’s art, language, culture, and cuisine. “I think it is very useful to understand the mechanisms of interaction between different legal systems and between different monotheistic religions. And to do that, you have to look at both the legal sources that were used by all and the products, i.e. reading law in action through archival documents,” Pascuita argues.
She is also currently working on a large research project financed by European funds and in collaboration between the University of Palermo (Italy) and the University of Oxford (UK). This project aims to develop a new reading of the Middle Ages in the 12th and 13th centuries from the perspective of legal and religious multiculturalism.
Pasciuta speaks highly of her time as a researcher at the Robbins Collection Research Center, remarking that using the Collection’s manuscripts allowed her to explore new lines of research. “The opportunity to experience the campus, to be at Robbins, was a real privilege. And all the staff at Robbins were extremely friendly and supportive. I felt like I was surrounded by friends,” she explained. While at the Collection, Pasciuta was able to write a whole chapter of the handbook on medieval legal sources that is now being published.
Professor Pasciuta’s work at the Center perfectly embodies the vision of Lloyd McCullough Robbins when he established an institution for research in civil and religious law at Berkeley Law.