Law, Power, and Consensus

Institutional Change and the Making of Trogir’s Medieval Statutes

Abstract

This study examines the evolution of the Statute of Trogir within the broader political, social, and documentary culture of late medieval Dalmatia. Moving beyond traditional legal readings, it approaches the statute as a dynamic instrument for articulating power, negotiating consensus, and legitimizing authority under shifting regimes. Drawing on the interpretive frameworks developed by Hagen Keller and Didier Lett, the article situates the Statute of Trogir within the broader Mediterranean phenomenon of pragmatic literacy and legal textualization. It argues that the statute’s function evolved from a practical instrument of governance to a symbolic monument of civic identity, revealing the intricate interplay between law, power, and memory. In its final Venetian phase, the Statute of Trogir thus became less a code of law than a performative expression of continuity and collective self-representation, illustrating how medieval legal codes could preserve, in written form, the illusion of consensus and the persistence of political identity across changing regimes.