Tra libertà e sottomissione: la contrattualità del lavoro e l’antropologia giuridica trecentesca

The contribution analyzes the legal nature of work in medieval legal thought. The starting point is the phenomenon of the liberation of the rural masses. The great juridical question of the worker's freedom is created in a contract which provides for the acceptance of the employer's direction. A question first thematized by the Bolognese school of glossators, starting with Irnerio, and then perfected by the commentators. Freedom of the worker and social subjection of the worker are the profiles that assert themselves during the fourteenth century and remain as a contradiction of the liberal juridical order.