The Michael H. Hoeflich Collection of Roman Law Books
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Boston College Law School Digital Commons @ Boston College Law School Rare Book Room Exhibition Programs Daniel R. Coquillette Rare Book Room 4-1-2011 The ichM ael H. Hoeflich olC lection of Roman Law Books - Spring 2011: An Illustrated Guide to the Exhibit Karen S. Beck Boston College Law School Follow this and additional works at: http://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/rbr_exhibit_programs Part of the Archival Science Commons, Comparative and Foreign Law Commons, Legal Commons, and the Legal History, Theory and Process Commons Digital Commons Citation Beck, Karen S., "The ichM ael H. Hoeflich Collection of Roman Law Books - Spring 2011: An Illustrated Guide to the Exhibit" (2011). Rare Book Room Exhibition Programs. Paper 15. http://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/rbr_exhibit_programs/15 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Daniel R. Coquillette Rare Book Room at Digital Commons @ Boston College Law School. It has been accepted for inclusion in Rare Book Room Exhibition Programs by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Boston College Law School. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE DANIEL R. COQUILLETTE for his generous donation. This gift RARE BOOK ROOM dovetails with our strong holdings in Anglo-American and early international law, and complements previous gifts in THE MICHAEL H. HOEFLICH these areas by Daniel R. Coquillette and COLLECTION OF ROMAN LAW Kathryn “Kitty” Preyer. BOOKS – SPRING 2011 The books on display in this room include a selection of the rare and AN ILLUSTRATED GUIDE antiquarian titles from Professor Hoeflich’s collection. The exhibit begins in TO THE EXHIBIT the first wall cabinet (labeled Cabinet II) and continues clockwise around the room, In December 2009, Michael H. ending with the large wooden horizontal Hoeflich, John H. & John M. Kane exhibit case to the right of the entrance Distinguished Professor of Law at the door. University of Kansas School of Law, donated his fine collection of antiquarian The exhibition was curated by and modern Roman law books to the Karen Beck, Curator of Rare Books / Boston College Law Library. Professor Collection Development Librarian. It will Hoeflich is a well-known scholar in many be on view through early June 2011. Some areas of law and legal bibliography, of the background text accompanying this including legal history, comparative law, exhibit was drawn from Peter Stein’s ethics, contracts, art law, and the history of book, ROMAN LAW IN EUROPEAN HISTORY law book publishing. His 1997 book, (1999); some of the descriptions of ROMAN AND CIVIL LAW AND THE individual books were adapted from DEVELOPMENT OF ANGLO-AMERICAN Michael von der Linn’s descriptions on the JURISPRUDENCE IN THE NINETEENTH Lawbook Exchange website CENTURY, is a classic. (www.lawbookexchange.com). Dating from 1536, Professor Hoeflich’s collection of nearly 300 titles includes both seminal and lesser-known First wall cabinet to the left of the works on Roman, civil, and canon law in entrance (labeled Cabinet II): Latin, German, French, and English. The collection is both broad and deep, JUSTINIAN reflecting his knowledge of and passion for Roman law, bibliography, and the In 527 AD, Justinian became bookmaker’s art. All of us at the Boston Emperor of Rome’s eastern empire. A College Law School and Law Library are strong ruler, he believed himself to hold profoundly grateful to Professor Hoeflich 1 supreme religious and temporal power. authorized to make substantive changes to The famous church of Hagia Sophia was ensure that the Digest expressed the law of the symbol of his religious authority. One sixth-century Byzantium. Called of the symbols of his temporal authority interpolations, these changes have been a was a quartet of legal works produced at source of scholarly interest for the past his direction which collectively came to be several centuries. Scholars have labored to known as the CORPUS IURIS CIVILIS. Most determine which bits of the text were of what we know about ancient Roman original to the classical jurists and which law is based on these texts. were sixth-century alterations to make the law relevant to the Byzantium of Justinian directed his minister Justinian’s time. Tribonian and an army of legal scholars to comb through Roman legal sources dating A third prong of Justinian’s back 1,000 years, from about 500 BC. massive overhaul of Roman law was the From this careful review of early sources, INSTITUTES, an elementary textbook for they compiled a CODE which arranged students that was nonetheless seen as imperial constitutions, or legislation equally authoritative as the DIGEST and written by Roman Emperors, in CODE. The DIGEST and INSTITUTES became chronological order. During this process law in 533 and the CODE a year later. the scholars tried to rid the text of redundancies, complexities, and These three pieces comprised contradictions. The Code was divided into Justinian’s compilation. He made the titles and spanned twelve books. whole work his own (rather than attributing it to earlier emperors and A second work, the DIGEST, was an jurists) by converting it into statutory anthology of extracts from the writings of form. He forbade any reference to the great early Roman jurists. Each fragment original source materials and tried to ban was attributed to its original source. commentaries on his text, stating that it According to Justinian, the immense was crystal clear as it was. Justinian volume represented only one-twentieth of continued to issue constitutions, or the material with which its compilers NOVELS, until his death in AD 565. The began, and it required three years to Novels were collected and added to the complete. The Digest is arranged by title other three parts and the whole (i.e. subject); and the titles are arranged in compilation came to be called the CORPUS a total of fifty books. As with the Code, IURIS CIVILIS, the body of the civil law. Justinian instructed the compilers to omit This massive work marked the redundancies and eliminate culmination of 1,000 years of legal contradictions, so evidence of development. Without Justinian’s disagreement among the classical jurists compilation we would know little about was erased. Finally, the compilers were 2 earlier Roman law, as little classical law has survived directly. Even before Justinian’s time, popes and emperors jockeyed for power. In the This case features three attractive late fifth century, the Church argued for examples of Justinian’s famous work. the right to try cases affecting it. At the same time, the Church was developing its IMP. CAES. IUSTINIANI own legal system based on resolutions of th INSTITUTIONUM LIBRI IIII. 4 ed. Church councils, the Bible, and papal Lyon, 1587 (shown closed). decisions, known as decretals. These sources were melded into a conceptual whole based on Roman secular – or civil – LES INSTITUTS DE L’EMPEREUR laws. JUSTINIEN. 2d ed. Paris, 1669. In the centuries after Justinian the canon and civil bodies of law continued to evolve, waxing and waning in influence as popes and emperors vied for power. Both bodies of law were subjects of academic study as well. However, for a long while canon law was at a disadvantage because it lacked an authoritative body of texts akin to Justinian’s CORPUS JURIS CIVILIS. This changed in the mid-twelfth century, when the monk Gratian published his DECRETUM, mining sources including the Bible, decretals, and fragments of Roman law much as Justinian had done with Roman law texts centuries earlier. In 1234, about a century after Gratian’s DECRETUM appeared, Pope Gregory IX promulgated a large collection of papal decretals. It was sometimes called the LIBER EXTRA because it was outside CORPUS JURIS PORTATILE. Erfurt (extra) Gratian’s DECRETUM. Together, the (Germany), 1730. DECRETUM and the DECRETALS were intended to form the body of the law of the Church. In 1298, Pope Boniface added the Cabinet III: LIBER SEXTUS, which supplemented the LIBER EXTRA. By the end of the fourteenth CIVIL AND CANON LAW 3 century, the Church had its own CORPUS IURIS CANONICI, a compilation of Church ROMAN LAW IN THE 16TH law on the same scale as Justinian’s CENTURY compilation of civil law, the CORPUS IURIS CIVILIS. During the centuries following Though in theory the two systems Justinian’s rule, his texts – and Roman existed on separate but parallel tracks, in law in general – were studied and practice the Church assumed jurisdiction incorporated into the legal systems of over nearly everything that pertained to different nations. The Roman law revival sin, salvation or damnation, such as started in Italy during the middle ages, crimes, adultery, forgery, homicide, then was taken up by France, the marriage, family law, and even financial Netherlands, and then Germany in later matters such as taking and making loans, centuries. In ROMAN LAW IN EUROPEAN interest, sales, and debt. By the fourteenth HISTORY, Peter Stein asserts that the texts century, the two sets of laws came to be of ancient Roman law have constituted “a dealt with together, even by civilian kind of legal supermarket, in which lawyers. The phrase “both laws” began to lawyers of different periods have found refer to two aspects of what was in many what they needed at the time.” Arranged ways regarded as a single legal system, the in rough chronological order, the ius commune, for all of Europe. materials in the following cabinets expand upon this theme. This cabinet features four examples of the seminal works in the development JOHANNES FERRARIUS. IOANNIS of canon law. FERRARII MONTANI ADNOTATIONES IN IIII. INSTITUTIONUM IUSTINIANI DECRETALES EPISTOLAE SUMMORUM LIBROS. Lyons, 1536. PONTIFICUM A GREGORIO NONO This very rare volume is the oldest PONTIFICE MAXIMO COLLECTAE. of Professor Hoeflich’s gift books.