The history of law and communal history: the problem of interpretation and intellectual fashion in academic community

For the whole period of the existence of Medieval studies the main (although not always consciously chosen) paradigm of studying the Middle Ages in Italy was the analysis of political, economic and social aspects of history on basis of legal sources. The new perspectives of studying these traditional topics of law history were not demonstrated. Historians have to admit that historical knowledge could not be described following the model of objective knowledge. A historian has to reflect on the use of every term, and to re-think one's views on historical knowledge on the level of research, not only on treatises on methodology.