ABSTRACT
The Middle Ages were a time of privilege. This statement may seem surprising, given that the idea of privilege, vague and elusive as it is, is more often associated, both in the writings of historical actors of the eighteenth century (the Essais sur les privilèges of the abbé Sieyes in 1789 having been preceded by dozens of similar such pamphlets) and in the work of modern historians, with the end of the ancien régime. My purpose here, nevertheless, is to develop an argument that, during the period between the twelfth century and the fourteenth, the idea of privilege played a central role in social organisation and in the ways in which law was perceived.
