My colleague at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Raymond Clemens, recently asked me for a list of the Law Library's medieval manuscripts in vernacular languages. The list is in three parts: (1) complete manuscripts, (2) facsimiles, and (3) binding fragments. You can view images from each of the items in a gallery on our Flickr site, "Medieval manuscripts in vernacular."

PART 1: COMPLETE MANUSCRIPTS

All of our complete medieval manuscripts are in Law French, the dialect used in English legal literature and common law pleading until the early 18th century. The image at right is from one of these manuscripts, a collection of case reports from the reign of Edward III known as the Liber Assisarum. Our collection has a number of manuscripts of Italian city statutes in the vernacular, but none of them are from the medieval era.

• (Law French) Britton. 13th century.
  
  
• (Law French) Novae narrationes. Late 14th century.
  
  
• (Law French) Liber assisarum: 20-45 Edward III (1345-1377) and two cases from 7 and 8 Henry IV (1405-1407). Ca. 1450.
  
  
• (Law French) England. Statuta Angliae nova. Ca. 1444-1483/1484. In Law French and Latin.
  
  
• (Law French) Index statutorum Edw. III - Hen. VI [bound with] De natura brevium. Ca. 1490-1550?

PART 2: FACSIMILES

The outstanding examples here are the four facsimiles of the medieval Saxon law code known as the Sachsenspiegel. These manuscripts are known collectively as the codices picturati (illustrated codices) because they are heavily illustrated with images designed to help the reader understand and navigate the code.

• (Church Slavic) Merilo pravednoe po rukopisi XIV veka. Moskva: Izd-vo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1961.
  
  
• (German) Vollständige Faksimile-Ausgabe im Originalformat des Dresdner Sachsenspiegels. 4 vols. Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 2002-2011.
  
  
• (German) Der Sachsenspiegel: die Heidelberger Bilderhandschrift Cod. Pal. Germ. 164. Leipzig: Insel Verlag, 1989.
  
  
• (German) Der Oldenburger Sachsenspiegel: Codex picturatus Oldenburgensis CIM I 410 der Landesbibliothek Oldenburg. 2 vols. Graz: Akademische Druck-u. Verlagsanstalt, 2006.
  
  
• (German) Sachsenspiegel: die Wolfenbütteler Bilderhandschrift Cod. Guelf. 3.1 Aug. 2̊. 3 vols. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1993.
  
  
• (Irish) Ancient laws of Ireland: Senchas mar, facsimile of the oldest fragments from ms. H.2.15 in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin. Dublin: Stationery Office of Saorstát Éireann, 1931.
  
  
• (Old Norse) Fragment AM 315 E of the older Gulathing law: from an old Norwegian codex of the XIIIth century with facsimile and introduction. Urbana: University of Illinois, 1928.
  
  
• (Portuguese & Spanish) Portugal. Tratados de Tordesillas. Madrid: Testimonio, 1986-1990.
  
  
• (Swedish) Wästgotha lagben. [Stockholm: s.n., 1889]. Facsimile of MS. B 59 in Kungliga biblioteket, Stockholm.
  
  
• (Welsh) Facsimile of the Chirk codex of the Welsh laws. Llanbedrog, N. Wales: [s.n.], 1909.

PART 3: BINDING FRAGMENTS

These fragments were recycled as binding materials. Several of them were featured in our Spring 2010 exhibit, "Reused, Rebound, Recovered: Medieval Manuscript Fragments in Law Book Bindings." We have two Flickr galleries devoted to manuscript binding fragments: "Medieval binding fragments," with 189 images, and a subset of these, "Medieval binding fragments - legal texts," with 33 images.

• (French) Fragment: French, perhaps a deed of sale for a piece of property, ca. 1475-1525; used as a wrapper. Medieval Manuscripts in Law Book Bindings, no. 20.  Found in: Giovanni Battista Caccialupi, De pensionibus (Rome, 1531).
  
  
• (German) Fragment: Cover is half stamped leather and half manuscript fragment, from a 13th-14th century manuscript of the Sachsenspiegel, marked with red initials. Found in: Angelo Gambiglioni, De maleficiis (Lyon, 1551).
  
  
• (Hebrew) Fragment: Maimonides’s Mishneh Torah / Vidal of Tolosa’s Maggid Mishne, ca. 1300-1500. Medieval Manuscripts in Law Book Bindings, no. 19.  Found in: Milan (Duchy), Constitutiones dominii mediolanensis (Novara, 1567).
  
  
• (Hebrew) Fragment: Mahzor, c. 1300-1500. Medieval Manuscripts in Law Book Bindings, no. 9.  Found in: Robert Parsons, Elizabethae reginae Angliae edictum promulgatum Londini 29. Nouemb. anni M.D. XCI. (Rome?, 1593).

-- MIKE WIDENER, Rare Book Librarian

Le code pénal / illustrations de Jean Dratz (Bruxelles: Isy Brachot Fils, 1950). Acquired with the Gary and Brian Bookman Literature and Arts Fund.

This 1950 edition of the Belgian Penal Code is illustrated by Jean Dratz (1903-1967), who studied law in the university before turning to a career as an artist. He contributed to humor magazines and comics, but was also known for somber paintings of Belgian landscapes.

"Laughing at Law Codes: A French Tradition," curated by Mike Widener, is on display through Dec. 20, 2012, in Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

Circulez! texte officiel du Code de la route / illustré de 50 dessins humoristiques de Pecqueriaux; avec une pré-farce de Cami (Paris: Éditions Denoël et Steele, 1930).

This edition of the French traffic code is graced with illustrations of disaster on French highways. The Law Library’s copy is inscribed by the illustrator and editor to the French prime minister, André Tardieu.

"Laughing at Law Codes: A French Tradition," curated by Mike Widener, is on display through Dec. 20, 2012, in Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

 Albert Dubout (1905-1976) was a successful French illustrator whose work appeared in dozens of books, magazines, advertisements, record sleeves, and movie posters. He was awarded the Legion of Honour in 1953. Among the French law books he illustrated with humorous cartoons were the Traffic Code, Tourism Code, and Tax Code. For more information, visit the official Albert Dubout website and the Wikipedia article on Dubout, or consult Albert Dubout: le fou dessinant (Paris, 2006), the catalogue of a 2006 exhibit on Dubout at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

Code de la route: texte officiel et complet / illustrations en couleurs de Dubout (Paris: Maurice Gonon, 1956). Acquired with the Gary and Brian Bookman Literature and Arts Fund.

Code du voyage et du tourisme: textes législatifs officiels / illustrations de Dubout (Paris: M. Gonon, 1960). Acquired with the Gary and Brian Bookman Literature and Arts Fund.

Code général des impôts: texte officiel / illustrations en coleurs de Dubout (Paris: M. Déchaux, 1958?). Acquired with the Gary and Brian Bookman Literature and Arts Fund.

"Laughing at Law Codes: A French Tradition," curated by Mike Widener, is on display through Dec. 20, 2012, in Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

Code Napoléon mis en vers Francais / par B.-M. Decomberousse; orné de plus de 60 bois originaux de Pierre Noël; preface de Maurice Garçon (Paris: Editions d'Art de l'Intermediaire du Bibliophile, 1932-1933). Acquired with the Gary and Brian Bookman Literature and Arts Fund. The versified text of the French Code Civil (or Code Napoleon) was first published in 1811. The illustrations in this edition are by Louis Vergniaud Pierre- Noël, a Haitian artist and postage stamp designer who was married to Lois Mailou Jones, an important artist in the Harlem Renaissance.

"Laughing at Law Codes: A French Tradition," curated by Mike Widener, is on display through Dec. 20, 2012, in Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

La Constitution  en vaudeville / oeuvre posthume d'un homme qui n'est pas mort, publiée par lui-même, et dédiée a Madame Buonaparte (Paris: Impr. de la Constitution, 1799). This protest against Napoleon’s new constitution shows his consort, the Empress Josephine, carrying the new constitution as she tramples the older ones.

Le Code civil / commenté par Cham; ouvrage destiné aux personnes qui dérsirent avoir des démêlés avec la justice (Paris: Martinet, 185-?). These are the earliest illustrations for the Code Civil. "Cham" was the pseudonym of Charles Amédée de Noé (1818-1879), a noted French caricaturist. there is a French blog devoted to Cham, as well as a Wikipedia article with some basic biographical facts.

Detail: "Objection to a marriage."

"Laughing at Law Codes: A French Tradition," curated by Mike Widener, is on display through Dec. 20, 2012, in Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

Joseph Hémard was the leader in adding humorous illustrations to French law codes. However, he was not the only one, or even the first. The tradition began with the French Revolution and continues to the present. The Lillian Goldman Law Library has a number of examples in its Rare Book Collection. In some of them, the legal text has been converted into verse. Many others follow Hémard's lead in juxtaposing hilarious visual commentary with the dry-as-dust legal text.

This exhibit is on display in conjunction with the Rare Book Collection's main exhibit for Fall 2012, "'And then I drew for books': The Comic Art of Joseph Hémard."

Code de la route: texte officiel et complet / illustrations en couleurs de Dubout (Paris: Maurice Gonon, 1956). Acquired with the Gary and Brian Bookman Literature and Arts Fund.

"Laughing at Law Codes: A French Tradition," curated by Mike Widener, is on display through Dec. 20, 2012, in Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

Over at the Worlds of Law blog, Mark Weiner has posted another video interview with me, titled "The Beauty of the Code." Mark asked me to speak about some of the famous codes in our collection, such as the first edition of the French Code Civil (1804) shown below, better known as the Napoleonic Code.

Among other things, I owe Mark Weiner thanks for putting me on the same screen as Marlon Brando. Who knew that his character Stanley Kowalski, from the movie version of Streetcar Named Desire, was an expert on the Napoleonic Code?

-- MIKE WIDENER, Rare Book Librarian

Another cataloging milestone to report... All of the collections that the Lillian Goldman Law Library acquired from the Association of the Bar of the City of New York (ABCNY) are now completely cataloged in our online catalog, MORRIS. The Roman-Canon Law Collection was completely cataloged in 2008. This fall, cataloging on the two remaining collections was completed. These collections are:

• The German Law Collection of the ABCNY (678 titles in 856 volumes). The collection arrived in September 2007. Fourteen of the titles are the only North American copies reported in OCLC, including the oldest: Ludwig Fruck's Teutsch Formular (Strassburg, 1529). Another, Civitatum Hanseaticarum Ordinatio nautica et jus maritimum (Hamburg?, 1660?), the maritime laws of the Hanseatic League, is an apparently unrecorded edition. Well over 500 of the titles were part of the law library of Konrad von Maurer (1823-1902), a leading historian of early Germanic and Nordic law.
  
  
• The Foreign Law Collection of the ABCNY (186 titles in 271 volumes). This collection was acquired in October 2008, as part of a cooperative effort with the Jacob Burns Law Library, George Washington University. The collection's title hints at its eclectic contents. It contains significant holdings of Italian, Flemish, Dutch, and Spanish law, additional titles in Roman, canon, and German law, and law books from jurisdictions as diverse as France, Mexico, Russia, Sweden, Ireland, and Bengal. There are some truly rare books here. The OCLC database reports only one other copy of the 1530 edition of the Practica Papiensis printed in Lyon by Fradin (Berlin State Library), and the 1507 Cologne edition of Petrus Ravennas's Compendium juris pontificii (Columbia University). One of my favorites is pictured below, Johannes Buno's Memoriale Institutionum juris (Ratzeburg, 1672), a textbook on Justinian's Institutes that employs a complex system of illustrated memory aids.
  

Thanks to the Law Library's outstanding cataloger, Susan Karpuk, for her fine work. Thanks again to the Yale Law School's Oscar M. Ruebhausen Fund for funding these acquisitions.

-- MIKE WIDENER, Rare Book Librarian

Source: Johannes Buno (1617-1697), Memoriale Institutionum juris (Ratzeburg, 1672); from the Foreign Law Collection of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York.

In 1925 someone, probably Hémard or his publisher, René Kieffer, came up with the brilliant idea of publishing an illustrated version of the part of the Code Civil of France containing the family law statutes that govern marriage, divorce, children, adoption, and other aspects of personal life. Hémard took the opportunity to produce witty and lively vignettes of individuals caught up in various family dilemmas. The book was published as a limited edition on special paper, with the illustrations done in pochoir.

Code civil: Livre premier, Des personnes. 1925. Pochoir. Rare Book Collection, Lillian Goldman Law Library. Gift of Farley P. Katz.

In about 1940 (the book is undated), Hémard moved on to the French Penal Code. Those statutes gave him even more material to work with, and the illustrations became increasingly wild and filled with black humor.

Code Penal. Circa 1940. Pochoir. Rare Book Collection, Lillian Goldman Law Library. Illustration for Article 319 (involuntary manslaughter).

Among Hémard's more pedestrian commissions were annual promotional pamphlets for the French National Lottery (1937-1942). Shown here is the 1938 Règlement de la Loterie National, setting forth the official rules.

Règlement de la Loterie National. 1938. Rare Book Collection, Lillian Goldman Law Library. Gift of Farley P. Katz.

In 1944, while Paris was still occupied by the Germans, Hémard produced his greatest legal achievement, the Code Général des Impôts Directs et Taxes Assimilées (the French Tax Code), fully illustrated, colored in pochoir and published as a lavish limited edition for collectors. The illustrations are larger and more numerous than in the earlier works, the puns more outrageous and the humor more broad. His Code Général des Impôts is one of the most accomplished works of legal humor ever published.

Code Général des Impôts Directs et Taxes Assimilées. 1944. Pochoir. No. 679 of 800 numbered copies. Rare Book Collection, Lillian Goldman Law Library. Gift of Farley P. Katz. Illustration for Art. 73, error in the application of tax. The translation of the sign: "The excuse the tax collector hears every day."


"'And then I drew for books': The Comic Art of Joseph Hémard," curated by Farley P. Katz and Mike Widener, is on display Sept. 15 - Dec. 15, 2012, in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

Joseph Hémard was born in 1880, in a small town near Paris. He was a prolific artist, designing costumes, theatre sets, patterns for printed textiles, book bindings, posters, menus, letterheads, and even a façade for a bar in the 1925 Paris Exposition of Decorative Art.

Hémard's lasting fame, however, lies in his book illustrations – always with a distinctly French character, usually comic, and often mildly erotic. He was probably the most prolific book illustrator in the first half of the twentieth century in France, if not the entire world. Many of his illustrations were executed in pochoir, a hand stenciling process producing intense, gorgeous colors still vibrant after three-quarters of a century.

A great number of books feature Hémard's comic illustrations, including the classics of French literature and many otherwise humorless works of nonfiction such as the French Tax Code (pictured at right), a pharmacy manual, and promotional booklets for the French National Lottery. Hémard was himself a prolific author, writing many of the books he illustrated including a children's history of France and textbooks of grammar, French history and arithmetic. Hémard also wrote novels and songs, and, in his final years, created crossword puzzles.

It is apparent from his drawings that Hémard loved all that he encountered in life – the young and the old, the rich and the vagrant, children and dogs, but above all, women.

Hémard died in Paris in 1961. After World War II, his popularity at home waned. He remains virtually unknown in the United States. In recent years, however, interest in Hémard has increased in France where his art has been the subject of exhibitions and scholarship.

The title of this exhibition is taken from a brief autobiographical essay in which Hémard first discusses a number of supposed ancestors, devotes two paragraphs to his childhood, and then states: “And then I drew for books.”

Farley P. Katz
San Antonio 2012

"'And then I drew for books': The Comic Art of Joseph Hémard," curated by Farley P. Katz and Mike Widener, is on display Sept. 15 - Dec. 15, 2012, in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

Joseph Hémard was one of the most prolific book illustrators of the 20th century, and certainly one of the funniest, yet he remains virtually unknown outside of his native France. Farley P. Katz, a San Antonio tax lawyer and a leading collector of Hémard’s works, is working to change this. Katz will speak on “The Comic Art of Joseph Hémard” on October 5 at the Yale Law School.

The talk is in conjunction with an exhibition at Yale’s Lillian Goldman Law Library, curated by Katz and Mike Widener, the library’s Rare Book Librarian. The exhibition features items from Katz’s collection and books that he donated to the Law Library.

What sets  Hémard apart from other illustrators are the books that one would not normally associate with illustrations. Chief among these are French law codes. Alongside the dry legalese of French tax law are Hémard’s hilarious visual puns and lampoons of tax collectors and government officials.

Katz will deliver his illustrated talk on Hémard at 1:00 p.m. on October 5, in Room 128 of the Yale Law School (127 Wall Street, New Haven, CT). The talk is free and open to the public.

The exhibit, “‘And then I drew for books’: The Comic Art of Joseph Hémard,” is on display until December 15 in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery of the Lillian Goldman Law Library (Level L2 in the Yale Law School). It displays two dozen of Hémard’s works. An online version of the exhibit will appear in the Yale Law Library Rare Books Blog.

For more information, contact Mike Widener, Rare Book Librarian, at (203) 432-4494 or mike.widener[at]yale.edu.

 A Joseph Hémard illustration from Code général des impôts directs et taxes assimilées (Paris: Editions Littéraires et Artistiques; Librairie "Le Triptyque", 1944), page 218.

It would take a genius to illustrate one of the most boring books imaginable, a code of tax laws, and create a comic tour-de-force. That genius was Joseph Hémard (1880-1961), who in his lifetime was probably France's most prolific book illustrator. His illustrations are the focus of the latest exhibit in the Yale Law Library, "'And then I drew for books': The Comic Art of Joseph Hémard."

The exhibit, on display until December 15, is curated by Farley P. Katz and Michael Widener. Katz, a tax attorney from San Antonio, has built one of the world's finest collections of Hémard's works. Widener is the Rare Book Librarian at the Lillian Goldman Law Library.

Hémard's illustrations have a distinctly French character, usually comic, and often mildly erotic. Many of his illustrations were executed in pochoir, a hand stenciling process producing intense, gorgeous colors still vibrant after three-quarters of a century.

The exhibit showcases eight of the 183 illustrations in Hémard's Tax Code, donated to the Yale Law Library by Katz, along with two of the other three law books on display from the library's Rare Book Collection.

The other 19 titles on view are all from Katz's personal collection. They include children's books and some of the many classics of French literature that Hémard illustrated, such as works by Balzac and Anatole France. Items on war include Hémard's own pictorial account of his time as a German prisoner in World War I, and a set of anti-Hitler postcards. Hémard even illustrated a pharmacy manual and a pamphlet on the prostate.

The exhibition's title comes from Hémard's tongue-in-cheek autobiography. Following a long, rambling description of supposed ancestors, he devotes two paragraphs to his early life, and finishes with: "And then I drew for books."

The exhibit is open to the public, 9am-10pm daily, September 15 - December 15, 2012 in the Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School. It will also go online here in the Yale Law Library Rare Books Blog.

On October 5, Katz will give an exhibit talk at 1:00 p.m. in Room 128 of the Yale Law School. The talk is also open to the public.

-- MIKE WIDENER
Rare Book Librarian

The poster illustration is from the cover of Code penal: commentaires imagés de Joseph Hémard (Paris: Editions Littéraires de France, ca. 1940), Rare Book Collection, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.