an inexhaustible source of information for legal history Meanwhile, in the late 1950s, Pierre-Clément Timbal founded in Paris the Centre d’Études d’Histoire Juridique to index and analyse systematically the records of the mediaeval parlement. Similar initiatives were underway across Western Europe, among them a team of Belgian and Dutchlegal historians under the direction of Tom de Smidt, Egied Strubbe, andJanVan Rompaey,who explored the judgements of the Parlement and theGreat Council of Mechelen. Their initial findings were published in 1965 as chronological lists of the cases and extended sentences, and a total of six volumes cover the period 1470–1580, providing the raw material for several studies.2 The international symposium organized in 1973 to mark the 500th anniversary of the founding of the Parlement of Mechelen brought together the legal historians working on mediaeval and early modern central courts, among them Bernhard Diestelkamp, who presented in Mechelen the first results of his research on the records of the Reichskammergericht (Imperial Chamber), and Pierre-Clément Timbal, who, with Josette Metman, presented the database they were developing for the Paris Parlement.3 Of all the projects on the history of supreme courts in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Timbal’s research team had probably advanced the furthest. The centralization of the court’s records in the National Archives was a factor, as was the important work of cataloguing and the preliminary studies of the Parlement’s organization and procedure by the archivists in the nineteenth century, and the support of the French 2 Jacobus Thomas De Smidt & Egied Strubbe (dir.), Chronologische lijsten van de Geëxtendeerde sententiën en procesbundels berustende in het archief van de grote raad van Mechelen(1470– 1504) (Brussels: Commission royale pour la publication des ancienne lois et ordonnances, 1965). The volumes include Jan Van Rompaey, De Grote Raad van de hertogen van Bourgondië en het Parlement vanMechelen(Brussels: Commission royale pour la publication des anciennes lois et ordonnances de Belgique, 1973); Cornelis Hendrik van Rhee, Litigation and legislation: Civil procedure at first instance in the Great Council for the Netherlands in Malines (1522–1559) (Brussels: Archives Générales du Royaume 1997); Jacques Lorgnier, Malines: Source foraine d’histoire de France(Lille:Ester, 2000);An Verscuren, The Great Council of Malines in the eighteenth century: An Aging Court in a ChangingWorld? (Studies in the History of Law & Justice, 7; Cham: Springer, 2014). 3 Concilium Magnum, 1473–1973: Herdenking van de 500e verjaardag van de oprichting van het Parlement en Grote Raad vanMechelen : colloquium(Brussel-Mechelen) 8-9.XII.1973(Brussels: Algemeen rijksarchief, 1977). 87
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