ABSTRACT Soothsaying or divination has generally been understood by historians within the context of magic, popular culture, and lay religion. This article considers what it might be able to tell us about legal culture in late-medieval England. It argues that soothsayers not only offered people an alternative to the pursuit of justice in law-courts, but also different means of conceiving what justice was: they did not necessarily aim at the conclusion of peace between parties, but rather claimed to unveil the truth. Elaborating this comparison, it argues that this casts a different light on the publicity of late-medieval legal culture.

中文翻译：

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中世纪晚期英格兰的占卜者、法律文化和真理政治

摘要 历史学家通常在魔法、流行文化和世俗宗教的背景下理解占卜或占卜。本文考虑了它可能会告诉我们有关中世纪晚期英国法律文化的内容。它认为，占卜者不仅为人们在法庭上寻求正义提供了另一种选择，而且还为人们提供了理解正义的不同方式：他们不一定旨在缔结各方之间的和平，而是声称要揭露真相. 在阐述这种比较时，它认为这对中世纪晚期法律文化的宣传产生了不同的影响。