Self-study
P1
By the mid-fourteenth century, professional associations of canon lawyers (legal advocates in Christian ecclesiastical courts, which dealt with cases involving marriage, inheritance, and other issues) had appeared in most of Western Europe, and a body of professional standards had been defined for them. ███
Intro topic ·
Professional associations of canon lawyers in the mid-14th century
These are lawyers in Christian religious courts. They had professional standards and were common in Western Europe.
Puzzling phenomenon ·
The associations didn't have big role in enforcing professional standards
Some even tried to stop efforts to enforce standards (example: Florentine guild).
P2
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Two potential hypotheses ·
Lawyers almost never violated standards, or disciplinary mechanisms were inefficient
P3
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Author's perspective ·
Disciplinary mechanisms were probably inefficient
Support 1 ·
English civil courts (non-religious) have much more disciplinary action
Those courts had ethical standards similar to the religious courts. So, disparity in number of disciplinary actions is probably due to religious courts' inefficient enforcement mechanisms. It's unlikely that religious lawyers were simply much more unethical than civil lawyers.
P4
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Support 2 ·
Lots of complaints by church authorities about unethical lawyers and inefficient disciplinary system
P5
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Result of complaints (related to support 2) ·
Induced religious lawyers to defend themselves from criticism
Complaints may have encouraged lawyers to form professional associations and to de-prioritize disciplining fellow lawyers.
Passage Style
Phenomenon-hypothesis (RC)
Single position
13.
The passage suggests that which ███ ██ ███ █████████ ██ ████ ██████ ██ ████ ████ ████ ██ ████████ ███████
a
Few guilds of ███ ██████████ ███████ ██████ ███ ██████████████ ████████
Not supported. We don’t have any evidence that guilds before the mid-fourteen century were mostly not important. Don’t pick this answer just because the passage begins by discussing canon lawyer associations that had formed by the mid-fourteenth century. That doesn’t in any way imply that guilds before this time period were not important.
b
Many medieval guilds █████████ █████████ ████ ███ ███████ ██ █████ ████████
Supported. We know that “other guilds” (besides canon lawyer associations) “often did [play a role in enforcing standards of conduct].” This is evidence that many medieval guilds had some influence on what their members did.
c
Most medieval guilds ██████████ ████ ████████ ███████ █████████ ████ ███ ███ ████████████ ██ █████ ████████
Not supported. Although we know that canon lawyer associations didn’t discipline their members as often as other guilds did, this doesn’t imply that their standards were lower. They could have had equal standards of conduct, but simply hid or refused to report violations of those standards.
d
Medieval guilds found ██ █████████ ██ ███████ ██████████ █████ █████ ████████
Anti-supported. We know that “other guilds” (besides canon lawyer associations) “often did [play a role in enforcing standards of conduct].
e
The ethical standards ██ ████████ ██████ ██████ ████ ███ ████ ██ ████████
Not supported. We don’t get any comparisons of the standards of one city compared to another.