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.

The Rare Book Collection, Lillian Goldman Law Library is proud to be a partner in an exhibition for an upcoming conference in the Italian Alps. The conference, "'Naturally separated': History and Autonomy of the Ancient Alpine Communities," will take place September 29, 2012, in the Palazzo della Cultura in Breno, Italy. Visit the conference website for the schedule of speakers and events.

The exhibition, "Antiche mappe e statuti delle Alpi," includes images from our collection of Italian statutes. Among them is the image shown here, Statuta et privilegia Valliis Antigorij (Geneva, 1685), the statutes of the Valle Antigorio. Also featured are maps from the collections of the other exhibition partner, the Moravian Library (Brno, Czech Republic). The exhibition was coordinated by Luca Giarelli.

The speakers at the day-long conference will discuss the legal, social, and political history of Italian Alpine communities and how they mantained their autonomy since the Middle Ages. The conference is sponsored by LontánoVerde and Incontri per lo Studio delle Tradizioni Alpine. The conference is open to the public, and admission is free.

Our best wishes for a successful conference. I wish I could be there!

MIKE WIDENER
Rare Book Librarian

Our 15th-century manuscript of the statutes of Montebuono, Italy, is now available in a full-color facsimile edition, along with a full transcription and three scholarly studies. Lo Statuto di Montebuono in Sabina del 1437 (Rome: Viella Libreria Editrice, 2011) is available for purchase from the publisher's website. It includes an introductory essay by Mario Ascheri, the leading scholar of Italian statuti, as well as a history of medieval Montebuono by Tersilio Leggio, and a detailed study of the Montebuono statutes by legal historian Sandro Notari. In addition, Alda Spotti of the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma provided a transcript of the Latin manuscript.

I was honored to speak at a symposium marking the publication of the volume on November 23 at the Biblioteca del Senato della Repubblica in Rome. Other speakers included Mario Ascheri (Università di Roma 3), Sandro Notari, Sandro Bulgarelli (director, Biblioteca del Senato della Repubblica), Maria Teresa Caciorgna (Università di Roma 3), the Hon. Dario Santori (mayor, Comune di Montebuono), and Yale's own Professor Anders Winroth. Following is an excerpt from my talk:

My library's involvement with the Statuto di Montebuono began in 1946. In that year Samuel Thorne was appointed as the head librarian of the Yale Law Library. Thorne was not a librarian by training. He was a legal historian, one of the outstanding historians of medieval English law in the 20th century. However, Thorne had a librarian's instincts. With the help of a large endowment, he began a ten-year campaign of buying rare books and manuscripts. He put the Yale Law Library into the first rank of historical law collections in the United States.

In his first annual report, for 1946, Thorne wrote: "The outstanding acquisition of the year was the notable collection of Italian statuta, numbering almost nine hundred volumes, purchased from a learned Italian lawyer who had brought it, over a period of fifty years, to its present completeness. It contained fifty-two manuscripts of the fourteenth to eighteenth centuries, nine incunabula, and many sixteenth-century editions."

With this single purchase, the Yale Law Library acquired what is still the largest collection of Italian statuti in the Americas. Among these nine hundred volumes was the 15th century manuscript of the Statuto di Montebuono.

In 2007, Professor Anders Winroth brought his medieval legal history seminar into our Rare Book Collection. One of his doctoral students, Ms. Oriana Bleecher, chose the Statuto di Montebuono for her research project.

Ms. Bleecher was perhaps the key catalyst in the project that led to the book we are celebrating today. She asked me if the Law Library could acquire a book that the Fondazione Gabriele Berionne had just published, Montebuono e il suo territorio. The Fondazione refused to sell us the book. Instead, Renata Ferraro insisted on donating this beautiful book to my library, on behalf of the Fondazione. As a token of gratitude, I sent Sig.ra Ferraro a copy of Ms. Bleecher's seminar paper.

Soon after, Sig.ra Ferraro sent me a full-page article from the newspaper, Montebuono Spazio Comune, about our Montebuono manuscript and Ms. Bleecher's research. In 2008, my library featured the Statuto di Montebuono in the inaugural exhibit in our new exhibit gallery. The title of the exhibit was "The Flowering of Civil Law: Early Italian City Statutes in the Yale Law Library."

At Sig.ra Ferraro's request, we digitized the Statuto di Montebuono, and then I put her in touch with Mario Ascheri, the world's leading scholar of early Italian statutes. The result of their collaboration, Lo Statuto di Montebuono in Sabina del 1437 (Rome: Viella Libreria Editrice, 2011) is before us today. The Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School, and I are deeply, deeply honored to have played a part in making this publication a reality.

I learned that my Italian colleagues consider the Montebuono statutes to be particularly significant: medieval municipal statutes from the Sabina region are generally rare, and especially such sophisticated statutes from a small rural community.

MIKE WIDENER
Rare Book Librarian

Biblioteca del Senato della Repubblica, Rome, 23 Nov. 2011. L-R: Prof. Maria Teresa Caciorgna (Università di Roma 3), Sandro Notari, Prof. Mario Ascheri (Università di Roma 3), Prof. Anders Winroth (Yale University), Mike Widener.

The Lillian Goldman Law Library prides itself on having what may be the best collection of early Italian statutes in the Western Hemisphere. However, our collection will never come close to matching the superb collection of statuti at the Biblioteca del Senato della Repubblica "Giovanni Spadolini" (the library of the Italian Senate).

It was a great privilege to tour the Biblioteca del Senato and its statute collection on a recent visit to Rome, courtesy of Dr. Raissa Teodori, Head of Special Collections, and Dr. Alessandra Casamassima (Special Collections Cataloger).

L-R: Alessandra Casamassima, Emma Widener, Mike Widener, Raissa Teodori.

Dr. Teodori gave an excellent overview of the library's special collections at the 25th Annual Pre-Conference of the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA)-Library and Research Services for Parliaments, in August 2009, which is available as a PDF file. In addition, there is a published guide to the collection, co-authored by Teodori, Casamassima and Dr. Sandro Bulgarelli (Director of the Biblioteca del Senato): Le Radici Della Nazione: La Storia Delle Citta Italiane Nella Biblioteca Del Senato Statuto Dei Comuni E Libri Antichi Di Storia Locale Dal XIII Al XIX Secolo (Skira, 2004).

The Senate library and its sister library from the lower house of the Italian Parliament, the Biblioteca della Camera, recently moved into a common building on the Piazza Minerva, next to the Pantheon. Both libraries have superb reading rooms and a strong emphasis on service to the general public as well as to legislators.

The library's building is itself a historic monument. Formerly the mother house of the Dominican Order, it was the site of Galileo's trial for heresy. The adjoining church, the Basilica of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, is the only Gothic church in Rome, and contains the tombs of four popes, St. Catherine of Siena, the painter Fra Angelico, and an important figure in legal history, the canonist Guillaume Durand (d. 1296), author of the Speculum iudiciale, "the most widely used procedural treatise of the Middle Ages" (Kenneth Pennington, Medieval Canonists A Bio-Bibliographical Listing).

MIKE WIDENER
Rare Book Librarian

Piazza Minerva in Rome, with the Biblioteca del Senato on the left, the Basilica of Santa Maria sopra Minerva on the right, and Bernini's elephant at center.

On a recent trip to Rome I had the great professional and personal pleasure of reuniting an Italian town with an important piece of its history.

Among the volumes in our outstanding collection of early Italian statutes is a 15th-century manuscript of the statutes of Montebuono, a village about 60 km. north of Rome (see map). The manuscript was featured in our 2008 exhibit, "The Flowering of Civil Law: Early Italian City Statutes in the Yale Law Library.” The Fondazione Gabriele Berionne and its president, Renata Ferraro, were extremely helpful in supporting research on the manuscript.

In gratitude for this help, the Lillian Goldman Law Library digitized the Montebuono manuscript. I was pleased to deliver it in person to the mayor of Montebuono, the Hon. Dario Santori, during a visit hosted by Renata Ferraro on November 29. The Comune di Montebuono is actively in historic preservation activities, including the restoration of its beautiful 11th-century church, San Pietro ad Muricentum, which is built atop an ancient Roman villa that belonged to the architect of the Pantheon, Marcus Agrippa. The Fondazione Gabriele Berionne has supported these preservation efforts and published a splendid illustrated book, Montebuono e il suo territorio: storia, architetture e restauri inizia la ricerca (Mariasanta Valenti, ed.; Rome: Fondazione Gabriele Berionne, 2007), which can be consulted in the Paskus-Danziger Rare Book Reading Room.

For more information on Montebuono, see the Montebuono On Line website; follow the links for "Storia e Monumenti."

My wife and I thank Renata Ferraro, her husband Giovanni Carosio, and Mayor Santori for a memorable visit, and Fiorenzo Francioli, a Montebuono official, for a learned and fascinating tour of San Pietro.

MIKE WIDENER
Rare Book Librarian

L-R: Dario Santori (mayor of Montebuono), Emma Widener, Renata Ferraro, Giovanni Carosio, Mike Widener, Fiorenzo Francioli, and Antonella Francioli. 29 Nov. 2009 at Il Boschetto restaurant near Montebuono.

My Flickr frenzy continues... Another new portrait gallery in the Rare Book Collection's section of the Yale Law Library Flickr site comes from Lodovico Vedriani's Dottori Modonesi di teologia, filosofia, legge canonica, e civile (Modena, 1665). The majority of the 36 portraits are of the leaders of Modena's legal profession, along with churchmen, diplomats, politicians, and authors. One woman is included: Tarquinia Molza. Each portrait is accompanied by a lengthy panegyric highlighting the individual's virtues and accomplishments.

The example below is of Aurelio Bellencini, "gran leggista," one of four Bellencini family members pictured in the book.

Our copy of Dottori Modonesi is bound with Vedriani's most well-known work, Raccolta de pittori, scultori et architetti modonesi (Modena, 1662), an important source for art historians. Our copy is also notable for having once formed part of the enormous private library of Richard Heber (1773-1833).

MIKE WIDENER
Rare Book Librarian

One of the first portrait albums ever published featured Italy's outstanding jurists, Antoine Lafréry's Illustrium iureconsultorum imagenes (Rome, 1566?). The book consists of 25 portraits, attributed to Niccolò Nelli, that reportedly were based on a set of portraits in the collection of Mantova Benavides, a jurist in Padua. The volume is one of the treasures of the Lillian Goldman Law Library's Rare Book Collection.

Scanned images of all the portraits are now up in the Law Library's Flickr site. The portraits are of leading jurists from the 13th to 16th centuries, and include such famous names as Accursius (ca. 1182-1260), the compiler of the standard gloss to the Corpus Juris Civilis, Bartolus of Sassoferrato (1313-1357), and the Renaissance humanist Andrea Alciati (1492-1550). In the midst of the 24 jurists' portraits is, inexplicably, the image of Dante Alighieri. Below is the portrait of Gerolamo Cagnolo (1491-1551), author of commentaries on the Digest and Code of Justinian.

MIKE WIDENER
Rare Book Librarian

Close to 30 students from the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna in Pisa, Italy toured the Paskus-Danziger Rare Book Room on March 4, 2008, during their visit to the Yale Law School. The students are jointly enrolled in the legal studies program at the University of Pisa.

After viewing our exhibit, The Flowering of Civil Law: Early Italian City Statutes in the Yale Law Library, they came into the Rare Book Room to see more of our Italian legal treasures. These included one of the first books printed in Naples, Tractatus seu apparatus de testibus by Albericus de Maletis (1471); a collection of portraits of early Italian jurists, Antoine Lafrery's Illustrium jureconsultorum imagines (1566); Friar Paolo Attavanti's Breviarium totius juris canonici (Milan, 1479), the first printed book with a portrait of the author; Antonino Ganini's Il legista versificante (Naples, 1752), an elementary legal textbook in verse; Comentario sul codice criminale d'Inghilterra (Milan, 1813), an Italian translation of Book IV of Blackstone's Commentaries; and Nuovo codice della strada (Milan, 1959), the Italian traffic code with humorous cartoons by the French illustrator Albert Dubout.

We had a great time. Thanks to all those who made the visit possible: Marina Santilli (Senior Research Scholar, Yale Law School); Caterina Sganga and Andrea Bertolini (LLM students at Yale Law School and graduate students at the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna); and my Law Library colleagues Teresa Miguel, Dan Wade, Ryan Harrington, and Evelyn Ma.

MIKE WIDENER
Rare Book Librarian

Here are a few of the highlights from our acquisitions in the past three months.

For our growing collection of illustrated law books:

• Quadruvium ecclesie (Paris, 1509) by Johann Hugonis de Sletstat (a.k.a. Johann Hug), considered the first text on German constitutional law; only one other copy in the U.S. (Robbins Collection). See the image at right.
  
• The first edition in German of Damhoudere’s Praxis rerum criminalium (Frankfurt, 1565), a standard work on the criminal law of northern Europe with woodcuts illustrating crimes and criminal procedure; the only U.S. copy.
• Juristische Ergötzlichkeiten vom Jungfrauen-Rechte (Frankfurt & Leipzig, 1715) bound with Juristische Ergötzlichkeiten vom Jung-Gesellen Rechte (Frankfurt & Leipzig, 1723), a pair of little books on law for young women and young men, respectively, with charming frontispieces; the only U.S. copies.
• Two standard works, Justinian’s Institutes (1516) and the Liber Sextus (1514) in lovely editions published by the Giunta family in Venice, with dozens of woodcut illustrations. They join an illustrated Giunta edition of the Decretals (1514) we acquired 60 years ago.
• Esdaile’s Temple Church Monuments (London, 1933) showing the tombs of Edmund Plowden and John Selden.
• Jesse Turner’s A Page from the English State Trials (1907?) extra-illustrated with 55 plates.
• Several 19th-century trials adorned with portraits of the accused and/or their victims.
• Fire on the Nunnery Grounds (2000), a graphic novel based on the the arson attack on the Ursuline Convent in Boston. We also obtained The Charlestown Convent: Its Destruction by a Mob, on the Night of August 11, 1834 (Boston, 1870), an account of the attack and the trials that followed.

We have acquired several law-related children’s books to join the Juvenile Jurisprudence Collection donated by Professor Morris L. Cohen, including:

• Jehoshaphat Aspin, The Constitution of England, or, Magna-Charta, Bill of Rights, Habeas Corpus, and All the Other Laws of England: Familiarly Explained for the Instruction of Youth; Illustrated with an Analytical Chart of the Government of Great Britain, Elegantly Coloured (London, 1810).
• Cruel Jim: and Other Stories (Philadelphia, 1869), a cautionary tale of how cruel children grow into career criminals.
• The Tragi-comic History of the Burial of Cock Robin: with The Lamentation of Jenny Wren; The Sparrow's Apprehension; and The Cuckoo's Punishment (Philadelphia, 1811); printed by John Bouvier, author of the first American law dictionary.

The American Trials Collection grew by 28 titles, including:

• Several trials featuring female victims: The Authentic Life of Mrs. Mary Ann Bickford (Boston, 1846); Lizzie Nutt's Sad Experience (Philadelphia, 1886), Myron Buel, the Murderer of Catharine Mary Richards (Binghamton, NY, 1879), Poor Mary Pomeroy! (Philadelphia, 1874), Trial for Libel: Susanna Torrey, Plaintiff (Fayetteville, VT, 1835), Confession of John Joyce: Who Was Executed on Monday, the 14th of March 1808, for the Murder of Mrs. Sarah Cross, with an Address to the Public and People of Colour (Philadelphia, 1808).
• A Report of the Trial, of James Sylvanus M'Clean (Philadelphia, 1812), an early use of the insanity plea, involving an extortion attempt against Stephen Girard, the wealthiest American of his time.
• More murder trials: Cluverius: My Life, Trial and Conviction (Richmond, 1887); Report of the Trial of Dominic Daley and James Halligan for the Murder of Marcus Lyon (Northampton, MA, 1806); Confession of Jesse Strang (Albany, 1827); Report of the Trials of the Murderers of Richard Jennings (Newburgh, NY, 1819); Trial of John Schild (1813).
• And... a small collection of manuscript court documents and transcripts relating to the trial of William Fitzgerald, accused of murdering a Shawnee Indian in Indiana Territory in 1802.

Additions to our William Blackstone Collection included:

• Blackstone’s Letter to the author of The Question stated (London, 1769), his contribution to the debate over the John Wilkes election.
• Outlines of the Jurisdiction of All the Courts in England and Wales by R. Maugham (London, 1838), a work closely tied to the Commentaries.
• The first edition of The Comic Blackstone (London, 1844-46) in two parts.

And a few odds & ends:

• The first edition of Edmund Plowden’s Commentaries (London, 1571), the first and for centuries the finest of the nominative reports.
• Statuti della Honoranda università de mercatanti ... di Bologna (1550), with a vellum musical manuscript used in the binding; the only U.S. copy.

MIKE WIDENER
Rare Book Librarian

The Flowering of Civil Law: Early Italian City Statutes in the Yale Law Library

One of the main reasons for organizing this exhibit is to encourage students and scholars to use the Yale Law Library's outstanding collection of early Italian statutes. All of the volumes in the collection are represented in our online catalog, MORRIS. Feel free to contact Mike Widener, Rare Book Librarian; see the Rare Books homepage for contact information.

Below is a selective list of online resources, bibliographies, and publications on early Italian statutes.

Online resources

• The Biblioteca del Senato della Repubblica "Giovanni Spadolini" (the library of the Italian Senate) houses the world's most extensive collection of early Italian statutes. The introduction to the site is also provided in French and English. See especially the description of the catalogues, which contain a wealth of information on Italian legal history and local history, The entire Catalogo della raccolta di statuti (8 volumes so far) is available online, as well as updates to the earlier volumes.
• Kenneth Pennington, professor of ecclesiastical and legal history at Catholic University, provides an concise overview of Italian legal history from the Middle Ages to the present, including a critical guide to the literature. See also his Roman and Secular Law in the Middle Ages.
• De Statutis is the website of the Comitato Italiano per gli Studi e le Edizioni delle Fonti Normative (CISEFN). The site is in Italian. See the Bibliografia Statutaria Italiana for an extensive bibliography of scholarship, mainly in Italian, on early Italian statutes, divided into a general section and sections on regions.
• Statuti della Liguria is a project of the Società Ligure di Storia Patria, with support from the Faculty of Jurisprudence, University of Genoa, to catalog and digitize statutes from the Liguria region, 12th-18th centuries. The site is in Italian and includes an extensive bibliography and a searchable database.

Bibliographies

• Biblioteca del Senato della Repubblica (Italy). Catalogo della raccolta di statuti, consuetudini, leggi, decreti, ordini e privilegi del comuni, delle associazioni e degli enti locali italiani, dal medioevo alla fine del secolo XVIII (Roma: Tipografia del Senato, 1943- ). Eight of the nine volumes have been published so far, and when it is complete it will be the most comprehensive bibliography of early Italian statutes. The entire set is available online at the website of the Biblioteca del Senato, along with updates to the earlier volumes. The Yale Law Library has a copy, which is currently shelved in the Rare Book Librarian's office.
• Leone Fontana, Bibliografia degli statuti dei comuni dell' Italia superiore (3 vols.; Torino: Fratelli Bocca, 1907). The Yale Law Library has a copy.
• Luigi Manzoni, comp., Bibliografia statutaria e storica italiana (2 vols. in 3; Bologna: G. Romagnoli, 1876-1892). Volume 1 covers statutes; volume 2 (which our library lacks) covers local histories. The Yale Law Library's copy is currently shelved in the Rare Book Librarian's office.
• Statuti italiani: riuniti ed indicati dal conte Antonio Cavagna Sangiuliani (2 vols.; Pavia: Prem. Tipografia successori fratelli Fusi, 1907). This entire collection is now in the library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and it is probably the only early Italian statute collection in the U.S. that rivals the Yale Law Library's collection. The catalogue is available online, but stops with entries for the letter M.

Books and articles

• Mario Ascheri, "Beyond the Comune: The Italian City-State and Its Inheritance," in The Medieval World (Peter Linehan & Janet L. Nelson eds.; London: Routledge, 2001), 451-468. "[T]he sections of statutes relating to public law have every right to be treated as constitutional history, even if their wide dispersion, mutability and multiplicity make them difficult to study. Paradoxically, it is their very richness that is responsible for the comparative neglect they have suffered. ... The city-states were the precursors of the majoritarian principle. In order to delimit the activities of different governmental agencies they introduced systems of checks and balances. They pioneered measures designed to depoliticise judges and the administration of justice and to moderate the excesses of their officials."
• George Bowyer, A Dissertation on the Statutes of the Cities of Italy (London: Richards and Co., 1838). Although 170 years old, it is so far the only full-length book in English on early Italian municipal statutes. The Yale Law Library has a copy in its collection, and it is also online in Google Books.
• Carlo Calisse, A History of Italian Law (Boston: Little, Brown, & Co., 1928). Translated by Layton B. Register, with introductions by Frederick Parker Walton and Hessel E. Yntema. Volume 8 in the Continental Legal History Series. The book is a translation of parts of Calisse's Storia del diritto italiano, and was described in a contemporary review as "a long and complicated book." The Yale Law Library has a copy.
• Kenneth Pennington, "Law Codes: 1000-1500," in Dictionary of the Middle Ages 7 (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1986), 425-431.

MIKE WIDENER
Rare Book Librarian

Illustration: Perugia (Italy), Statuta augustae Perusiae (Perugia, 1523-1528).

The Flowering of Civil Law: Early Italian City Statutes in the Yale Law Library

“The outstanding acquisition of the year”

The Yale Law Library owes its superb collection of early Italian statutes to a generous alumnus, an opportunistic librarian, and a “learned Italian lawyer.”

John A. Hoober (Law 1891), an attorney and industrialist in York, Pa., led a fund drive that raised a hefty acquisitions endowment for the Yale Law Library in 1942, much of it from Hoober’s own pocket. When legal historian Samuel Thorne took over as Law Librarian three years later, he had an ample book budget and a buyer’s market in war-torn Europe. Thorne’s report for the 1945-46 academic year included the following under the heading “Notable Purchases”:

"The outstanding acquisition of the year was the notable collection of Italian statuta, numbering almost nine hundred volumes, purchased from a learned Italian lawyer who had brought it, over a period of fifty years, to its present completeness. It contained fifty-two manuscripts of the fourteenth to eighteenth centuries, nine incunabula, and many sixteenth-century editions, more than a few unknown to Luigi Manzoni whose ‘Bibliografia statutaria e storica italiana’ is the standard bibliography of the class."

Efforts to discover the identity of the “learned Italian lawyer” who sold his splendid collection to Yale have so far come up empty.

The collection has been supplemented by two major acquisitions from the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. Their Roman-Canon Law Collection, placed on permanent loan at the Yale Law Library in 2006, included twenty-two volumes of Italian treatises and judicial opinions. An additional sixty volumes were acquired in Fall 2008 as part of the Bar’s Foreign Law Collection. In addition, book dealers in the U.S. and Europe have supplied individual volumes of statutes for Ancona, Bergamo, Brescia, Cremona, Florence, Genoa, Milan, Monteregale, Novara, Riviera di Salo, Sicily, Rome, Trento, and Vicenza.

BENJAMIN YOUSEY-HINDES & MIKE WIDENER
Exhibit Curators

“The Flowering of Civil Law: Early Italian City Statutes in the Yale Law Library” is on display October 2008 through February 2009 in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

Illustration: Statuta provisiones et ordinamenta magnificae civitatis Ferrariae (2nd ed.; Ferrara, 1534).

The Flowering of Civil Law: Early Italian City Statutes in the Yale Law Library

Papal States. Gli statuti dell’agricoltura con varie osservazioni, bolle, decisioni della S. Ruota, e decreti intorno alla medesima (Rome 1718). Acquired with the Albert S. Wheeler Fund, May 2008.

(View the Papal States on a map: "Stato Pontificio".)

The agricultural statutes of Rome were first collected during the pontificate of Gregory XII in the early 1400s, and underwent several revisions and reforms before they were promulgated for the last time in 1848. Yale Law Library owns six different editions of this wide-ranging collection of regulations and advice of use to lawyers, agriculturalists (agronomo), and rural merchants in the Papal States. The 1718 edition shown here was the first to be translated from Latin to Italian, and includes a twenty-six page illustrated treatise on locusts.

BENJAMIN YOUSEY-HINDES & MIKE WIDENER
Exhibit Curators

“The Flowering of Civil Law: Early Italian City Statutes in the Yale Law Library” is on display October 2008 through February 2009 in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

The Flowering of Civil Law: Early Italian City Statutes in the Yale Law Library

Rovito, Scipione. Decisiones supremorum tribunalium regni Neapolitani (Naples, 1687). Acquired from the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, September 2008.

(View the Kingdom of Naples on a map: "Regno di Napoli".)

The most recent addition to the Yale Law Library’s collection of early Italian materials is not a body of statutes, but rather an extensive set of rulings written by the jurist Scipone Rovito (1556-1636) as a member of the highest court in the Kingdom of Naples. In this rare 1687 edition the rulings are accompanied by commentaries and summaries written by the Neopolitan jurist Blasio Altimaro (1630-1713). The Yale Law Library’s collection of municipal statutes is complimented by a large—and growing—number of early commentaries and treatises on Italian law like this one.

BENJAMIN YOUSEY-HINDES & MIKE WIDENER
Exhibit Curators

“The Flowering of Civil Law: Early Italian City Statutes in the Yale Law Library” is on display October 2008 through February 2009 in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

The Flowering of Civil Law: Early Italian City Statutes in the Yale Law Library

Montefortino (Italy). Statutum Montisfortini in Campanea [with] Statuto e tassa de mercedi che si devono al governatore, mandatario, e barigello di Montefortino in Campagna (manuscript, Montefortino, 1685). Acquired with the John A. Hoober Fund, May 1946.

(View Montefortino, today named Artena, on a map.)

The present-day city of Artena, southeast of Rome, was known as Montefortino from the Middle Ages until 1873. We owe the following description of our manuscript to Alfredo Serangeli, Director of the Archivio Storico “Innocenzo III” in Segni, Italy, and present it here with his permission and our thanks:

The Montefortino Statutes are the regulations for an essentially feudal municipality. Everything belonged to the feudal lord “in dominio et iurisdictione”, while vassals had broad rights for grazing, gathering wood and working the land. In fact, the statutes gave the feudal lord the right to one-fourth of all agricultural production, including wheat, barley, beans, spelt, millet, hemp, chick peas, and wine. This right was his in all cases, regardless of how the land was owned and worked.

The community, whose life was regulated in detail, was concerned that the feudal lords and governors should also respect the statutory rules. In fact, in a 1559 petition to the Colonna princesses (Tuzia, Porzia, Claudia and Virginia, owners of Montefortino at that time), concerning the reconstruction and reestablishment of normal conditions after the destruction of the castle in 1557 (during the Campagna War that the Papacy and France waged against Spain), Montefortino's inhabitants asked that their governor respect the statutes. In the notary’s act produced when Prince Ascanio Massimo took possession of the castle on February 12, 1595, the prince's oath to obey and enforce the Statutes is specifically mentioned.

The original manuscript is composed of 38 parchment folia, 16 x 24 cm., and was produced in 1468 by Antonio son of Luca, one of the most important notaries in Montefortino during the 15th century. The manuscript held in the Lillian Goldman Law Library is a copy of the revised statutes of 1606.
    -- Alfredo Serangeli, Director, Archivio Storico “Innocenzo III”

Incidentally, Alfredo Serangeli is from the same family as Stefano Serangeli, the scribe who produced the Yale Law Library's manuscript in 1685.

BENJAMIN YOUSEY-HINDES & MIKE WIDENER
Exhibit Curators

“The Flowering of Civil Law: Early Italian City Statutes in the Yale Law Library” is on display October 2008 through February 2009 in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

The Flowering of Civil Law: Early Italian City Statutes in the Yale Law Library

Honoring the Hon. Guido Calabresi (Law ’58)

The Yale Law School has marked the 50th anniversary of the Hon. Guido Calabresi’s graduation by acquiring a significant collection of 60 early Italian law books for the Law Library’s Rare Book Collection from the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. The Lillian Goldman Law Library is pleased to join with the Law School by dedicating this exhibit of Italian statutes to Judge Calabresi.

Judge Calabresi is the Sterling Professor Emeritus of Law at Yale Law School. He was born in Milan, Italy and graduated at the top of the Yale Law School Class of 1958. He also earned a B.S., summa cum laude, from Yale College in 1953, a B.A. degree with First Class Honors from Magdalene College, Oxford University, in 1955, and an M.A. in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from Oxford University in 1959. He joined the Yale Law School faculty in 1959 and served as Dean from 1985 to 1994, when he was appointed Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit by President Bill Clinton (Law '73).

“Every schoolboy knows that the Italian universities, and especially Bologna, were the great centers of nonreligious law throughout the Middle Ages and beyond. Indeed, there may well have been no break at all between the ancient Roman law schools in Bologna and the University of Bologna. What is not generally known, however, is how modern law was in Italy at that time, at least in contrast to what was happening in England.” — Guido Calabresi, “Two Functions of Formalism: In Memory of Guido Tedeschi,” 67 University of Chicago Law Review 479, 481 (2000).

BENJAMIN YOUSEY-HINDES & MIKE WIDENER
Exhibit Curators

“The Flowering of Civil Law: Early Italian City Statutes in the Yale Law Library” is on display October 2008 through February 2009 in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

Illustration: Title page from a compilation of statutes for Judge Calabresi's hometown, Milan, Constitutiones dominii mediolanensis (4th ed.; Novara, 1597).

The Flowering of Civil Law: Early Italian City Statutes in the Yale Law Library

Trento (Italy). Libro de Statuti et Ordini delli Signori Sindici della Magnifica Communità, & Città di Trento (Trent, 1640). Acquired with the Arthur Hobson Dean Purchase Fund in International Law, January 2008.

(View Trento on a map.)

This recent acquisition is a first edition of the city laws of Trento, which were issued under the authority of Cardinal Carlo Madruzzo in 1640. Madruzzo oversaw the revision of statutes that had been issued originally by Cardinal Bernhard von Cles in 1528. This copy is originally from the library of the very same Cardinal Madruzzo and bears his signature on the title page.

BENJAMIN YOUSEY-HINDES & MIKE WIDENER
Exhibit Curators

“The Flowering of Civil Law: Early Italian City Statutes in the Yale Law Library” is on display October 2008 through February 2009 in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

The Flowering of Civil Law: Early Italian City Statutes in the Yale Law Library

Milan (Duchy). Constitutiones dominii mediolanen. cum ordinibus excell. Senatus (4th ed.; Novara, 1597). Acquired with the John A. Hoober Fund, April 1948.

(View the Duchy of Milan on a map: "D. di Milano".)

Following a panegyric treatise “On the Origins of the Law of Milan” by Francisci Crassi, this volume contains the constitutions of 1541 divided into five books. Here we see the beginning of the statutes that govern the Consuls of Merchants, who had jurisdiction over “all cases turning between traders, or merchants, or their agents, and contracts between them.” It appears that the notes in the margins were made in the middle of the seventeenth century. Note the “little hand,” or manicula, at the top of page 145, used since the Middle Ages as a common way to mark important passages in the text.

BENJAMIN YOUSEY-HINDES & MIKE WIDENER
Exhibit Curators

“The Flowering of Civil Law: Early Italian City Statutes in the Yale Law Library” is on display October 2008 through February 2009 in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

The Flowering of Civil Law: Early Italian City Statutes in the Yale Law Library

Pesaro (Italy). Statuto del danno dato della mag. città di Pesaro, Libro quarto (Pesaro, 1579). Acquired with the John A. Hoober Fund, May 1947.

(View Pesaro on a map.)

Città di Castello (Italy). Statuta, et reformationes super dannis datis a R. Cam. Ap. Confirmata. M. Comunitatis civitatis Castelli (Perugia, 1582). Acquired with the John A. Hoober Fund, February 1947.

(View Città di Castello on a map.)

The municipal codes of both Pesaro and Città di Castello were originally printed in Latin in the 1530s (Yale Law Library has both). The two small volumes displayed here deal with matters of property damage. The selection from Pesaro contains a complete set of reformed and emended statutes on the subject, translated into Italian. The selection from Città di Castello, on the other hand, only contains reforms of the legal process for addressing property damage. Despite the title page and preface being in Latin, the actual text of the Città di Castello reforms is also in Italian.

BENJAMIN YOUSEY-HINDES & MIKE WIDENER
Exhibit Curators

“The Flowering of Civil Law: Early Italian City Statutes in the Yale Law Library” is on display October 2008 through February 2009 in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

The Flowering of Civil Law: Early Italian City Statutes in the Yale Law Library

Sant’Elpidio a Mare (Italy). Statutorum ecclesiasticae terrae Sancti Elpidii (Macerata, 1571). Acquired with the John A. Hoober Fund, September 1947.

(View Sant’Elipido a Mare on a map.)

Yale Law Library’s copy of the statutes of the small city of Sant’Elipido was once owned by Leopoldo Armaroli, whose signature is on the flyleaf. Born in the nearby provincial capital of Macerata in 1766, Armaroli earned a degree in civil and canon law at the local university. He held various senior roles within the justice systems of central and northern Italy, and in 1831 was even elected Minster of Justice of the short-lived United Italian Provinces (Provincie Unite Italiane)—an important early step towards Italian unification. In his later years, Armaroli published a book about the abandonment of children.

BENJAMIN YOUSEY-HINDES & MIKE WIDENER
Exhibit Curators

“The Flowering of Civil Law: Early Italian City Statutes in the Yale Law Library” is on display October 2008 through February 2009 in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

The Flowering of Civil Law: Early Italian City Statutes in the Yale Law Library

Alessandria (Italy). Codex statutorum magnifice communitatis atque dioecaesis Alexandriae ad respublicae utilitatem noviter excusi (Alessandria, 1547). Acquired with the John A. Hoober Fund, May 1946.

(View Alessandria on a map.)

The statutes of the “magnificent” city and diocese of Alessandria feature one of the most striking title pages in Yale Law Library’s large collection of Italian civil codes. Beneath the municipal arms (the red cross of Saint George) and the watchful eyes of its patron saints we find a dramatic depiction of the city and its bustling port on the River Tanaro. Only a handful of early Italian municipal codes feature a cityscape rather than an elaborate version of the municipal arms. Note as well the ornate printer’s mark of Francesco and Simone Moscheni of Bergoni at the bottom of the page. These brothers went on to print collections of madrigals and various pieces of propaganda related to English relations with the Papacy.

BENJAMIN YOUSEY-HINDES & MIKE WIDENER
Exhibit Curators

“The Flowering of Civil Law: Early Italian City Statutes in the Yale Law Library” is on display October 2008 through February 2009 in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

The Flowering of Civil Law: Early Italian City Statutes in the Yale Law Library

Papal States. Aegidiane constitutiones recognitae, ac novissime impressae cum privilego Pauli PP. III Pont. Max. (Rome, 1543). Acquired with the John A. Hoober Fund, January 1947.

(View the Papal States on a map: "Stato Pontificio".)

For over a thousand years (754-1870) a large portion of the central Italian peninsula recognized the pope not only as a spiritual leader, but as the highest civil ruler as well. This area has traditionally been referred to as the Papal States, and within them regions regularly shifted between two different political systems. Some lands were "immediate subjects" of the pope, meaning that a papal representative resided there and administered the territory. Other lands were "mediate subjects, " meaning that public power was exercised by a feudatory of the pope without direct papal involvement.  Local municipal codes were kept in place under both systems, but they all were supposed to operate within a framework laid out in the Constitutions of the Holy Mother Church. The Constitutions were drafted in 1357 and laid out the political and juridical structure for the region.

In the example seen here, the Constitutions of the Holy Mother Church are called by their more common name, the “Egidian Constitutions,” in honor of their compiler, cardinal Álvarez Carillo Gil de Albornoz, known in Italian as Egidio Albornoz. This edition contains the additions made by Cardinal Rodolfo Piu di Carpi, a famous humanist and patron of the arts who served as papal legate to the March of Ancona in the 1540s, and whose coat-of-arms appears on the title page.

BENJAMIN YOUSEY-HINDES & MIKE WIDENER
Exhibit Curators

“The Flowering of Civil Law: Early Italian City Statutes in the Yale Law Library” is on display October 2008 through February 2009 in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

The Flowering of Civil Law: Early Italian City Statutes in the Yale Law Library

Ferrara (Italy). Statuta provisiones et ordinamenta magnificae civitatis Ferrariae (2nd ed.; Ferrara, 1534). Acquired with the John A. Hoober Fund, May 1946.

(View Ferrara on a map.)

This is the second edition of the statutes of the city of Ferrara, the first having been published in 1476. According to a note written on the title page, this book was owned and annotated by a Ferrarese attorney named Hieronymus Rasorio. A list of what appear to be legal engagements written in the back of the book suggests that he was active in the 1560s. Here we can see the way a practicing attorney utilized the text of the statutes. In this example, Hieronymus has made extensive annotations to a statute concerning prescription (the acquisition of rights or property by extended, honest, and uninterrupted possession or use).

BENJAMIN YOUSEY-HINDES & MIKE WIDENER
Exhibit Curators

“The Flowering of Civil Law: Early Italian City Statutes in the Yale Law Library” is on display October 2008 through February 2009 in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

The Flowering of Civil Law: Early Italian City Statutes in the Yale Law Library

Pesaro (Italy). Statuti del Collegio mercantile de la Città di Pesaro (Pesaro, 1532). Acquired with the John A. Hoober Fund, May 1946.

(View Pesaro on a map.)

While the majority of Yale Law Library’s Italian statutes are comprehensive municipal codes, the collection also contains sets of regulations pertaining to more specific matters, such as merchants and trade, agriculture, fishing, tolls, or taxation. The volume displayed here concerns Pesaro’s mercantile court, or Collegio mercantile. The Collegio was a group of twenty-four magistrates—none of whom were merchants—who rendered justice in commercial disputes arising between merchants.

The Law Library’s copy once belonged to Walter Ashburner (1864-1936), a noted professor of jurisprudence, book collector, and co-founder of the British Institute of Florence.

Note the unusual text facing the title page. The bookbinder used pages from Publio Francesco Modesti’s poem Venetias for the flyleaves. Published just up the coast from Pesaro at Rimini in 1521, the work celebrates the history of Venice and its citizens.

BENJAMIN YOUSEY-HINDES & MIKE WIDENER
Exhibit Curators

“The Flowering of Civil Law: Early Italian City Statutes in the Yale Law Library” is on display October 2008 through February 2009 in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

The Flowering of Civil Law: Early Italian City Statutes in the Yale Law Library

Sicily (Kingdom). Capitula regni Sicilie (Messina, 1526). Acquired with the John A. Hoober Fund, May 1946.

(View the Kingdom of Sicily on a map: "Regno di Sicilia".)

Ever since the twelfth century, powerful families and royal dynasties of western Europe had competed to control southern Italy—a region made up of the Kingdom of Sicily and the Kingdom of Naples. Building upon the Constitutions of Melfi promulgated by Emperor Frederick II in 1231 (the Law Library has a manuscript copy from 1324), the legal system of the region was comparatively centralized, with law-making power residing primarily with the ruling monarchs. An example of this can be seen in this volume of the laws of the Kingdom of Sicily, in which the statutes are arranged not by subject, but based on the ruler who issued them. By the early 1530s new editions of these laws began appearing with more practical subject arrangements.

BENJAMIN YOUSEY-HINDES & MIKE WIDENER
Exhibit Curators

“The Flowering of Civil Law: Early Italian City Statutes in the Yale Law Library” is on display October 2008 through February 2009 in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

The Flowering of Civil Law: Early Italian City Statutes in the Yale Law Library

Perugia (Italy). Statuta augustae Perusiae (Perugia, 1523-1528). Acquired with the John A. Hoober Fund, May 1946.

(View Perugia on a map.)

Early in the sixteenth century, the leaders of Perugia decided it was time to reform, expand, and print the city’s statutes. Here we see the result of that project. A group of lawyers and jurists were appointed—one of each for each section of statutes—and given the task of bringing the code up to date. The four pairs of reformers completed their tasks at different times between 1523 and 1528.

On display here is the beginning of the fourth book of statutes, where we find a striking woodcut of the printer Girolamo Cartolari presenting the finished volume to Malatesta Baglioni, the ruler of Perugia.

BENJAMIN YOUSEY-HINDES & MIKE WIDENER
Exhibit Curators

“The Flowering of Civil Law: Early Italian City Statutes in the Yale Law Library” is on display October 2008 through February 2009 in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

The Flowering of Civil Law: Early Italian City Statutes in the Yale Law Library

Crasciana (Italy). Statuta, decreta, et ordinameta communis et hominum Crascane (manuscript, Crasciana, 1519-1576). Acquired with the John A. Hoober Fund, May 1946.

(View Crasciana on a map.)

This manuscript is from Crasciana, a small village outside Lucca in Tuscany, and displays many interesting features. The first half was written by the notary Franco Inporino in 1519, and is followed by additions from at least eight other notaries up to the late 1570s. In some cases these notaries have added or emended statutes, in others they have simply certified that the laws were still in force. The pages presented here were written by “Andrea Paullecti, public notary and citizen of Lucca” in 1527. On the left are two laws pertaining to the keeping of pigs within the commune’s boundaries, and on the right is a statute concerning the penalties assessed for illegally harvesting timber on public land.

BENJAMIN YOUSEY-HINDES & MIKE WIDENER
Exhibit Curators

“The Flowering of Civil Law: Early Italian City Statutes in the Yale Law Library” is on display October 2008 through February 2009 in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

The Flowering of Civil Law: Early Italian City Statutes in the Yale Law Library

Venice (Republic). Institutio Phederici Reynerii in dignitatem rectoris civitatis Canee in insulae Cretea ab Leonardo Laurendano duce Venetiarum (manuscript, Venice, 22 Sept. 1507). Acquired with the John A. Hoober Fund, June 1956.

(View the Republic of Venice on a map: "Rep. di Venezia".)

 In this fascinating manuscript the Doge of Venice, Leonardo Laurendano, names Federico Reynerio as Venice’s governor in the region of Chania on the northern coast of Crete for two years –“unless your successor arrives earlier.” Organized and presented much like the municipal statutes in this exhibition, the manuscript lays out over one hundred and eighty different instructions for the new governor to follow. Note how Federico’s name and coat-of-arms have been written over earlier erasures. Perhaps he was not the first recipient of this manuscript? This is one of six similar manuscripts held by the Yale Law Library.

BENJAMIN YOUSEY-HINDES & MIKE WIDENER
Exhibit Curators

“The Flowering of Civil Law: Early Italian City Statutes in the Yale Law Library” is on display October 2008 through February 2009 in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

The Flowering of Civil Law: Early Italian City Statutes in the Yale Law Library

Bergamo (Italy). Statuta magnificae communitatis Bergomi (Brescia, 1491). Acquired with the John A. Hoober Fund, May 1946.

(View Bergamo on a map.)

The city of Bergamo was part of the Venetian Republic from 1426 to 1797, but like many of Venice’s territories it was allowed to maintain its own municipal statutes. The volume displayed here is the first printed edition of those statutes, and one of thirteen incunables (books printed before 1500) in Yale Law Library’s collection of Italian civil codes. Here we see an excellent example of the coexistence of print and manuscript, as the statutes printed in 1491 are supplemented by thirty-three pages of “reformationes et correctiones” from 1492, and eight pages of material added between the 1570s and 1610s.

BENJAMIN YOUSEY-HINDES & MIKE WIDENER
Exhibit Curators

“The Flowering of Civil Law: Early Italian City Statutes in the Yale Law Library” is on display October 2008 through February 2009 in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

The Flowering of Civil Law: Early Italian City Statutes in the Yale Law Library

Montebuono (Italy). Statuti communis et hominum terre Montis Boni (manuscript, Montebuono, middle or late 15th century). Acquired with the John A. Hoober Fund, May 1946.

(View Montebuono on a map.)

The statutes from the town of Montebuono (about thirty miles north of Rome) were collected and revised by the notary Eusebius Angeli of Narni as part of a reform program in 1437. The manuscript you see here was copied out by a scribe named Maximus Vincentius several years later. The statutes are organized into four sections: the first deals with city government; the second with damages to property; the third with civil, social, and legal matters; and the fourth with violent crimes and perjury. Luckily, one statute prohibited the throwing of dead animals or other filth onto people walking along the public road.

Yale Law School’s rare manuscript is attracting attention in modern-day Montebuono, now a village of about a thousand residents. Renata Ferraro, president of the Fondazione Gabriele Berionne, wrote an article about the Yale manuscript in the August 2008 issue of Montebuono Spazio Comune. The issue is available as a PDF file, at the Montebuono On Line website, and Ferraro's article is on pages 6 and 8. The article is based on a detailed study of the manuscript authored by Yale graduate student Oriana Bleecher.

If you are interested in learning more about the rich history of Montebuono, see Montebuono e il suo territorio: storia, architetture e restauri inizia la ricerca (Mariasanta Valenti, ed.; Rome: Fondazione Gabriele Berionne, 2007), shelved in the Paskus-Danziger Rare Book Reading Room. We thank Renata Ferraro and the Fondazione Gabriele Berionne for the gift of this splendidly illustrated volume.

BENJAMIN YOUSEY-HINDES & MIKE WIDENER
Exhibit Curators

“The Flowering of Civil Law: Early Italian City Statutes in the Yale Law Library” is on display October 2008 through February 2009 in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

The Flowering of Civil Law: Early Italian City Statutes in the Yale Law Library

Introduction

Beginning in the eleventh century, scholars in what is today northern Italy began to rediscover the Roman legal tradition as expressed in the Emperor Justinian’s sixth-century Corpus iuris civilis. In the centuries that followed, jurists, merchants, clergymen, and civic leaders all across the Italian Peninsula pragmatically integrated Roman law with the long-held customary laws of their own towns and cities. Over time a new and dynamic system of civil law emerged, one which continues to evolve to this day. The works featured in this exhibition are simultaneously examples of—and evidence for—the flourishing of Italian civil law in the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries.

The Yale Law Library’s collection of early Italian city statutes contains codes from over three hundred and eighty municipalities—including major cities such as Milan, Bologna, Rome, and Venice as well as tiny villages like Bellosguardo, Crasciana, and Montebuono. Regardless of their size, all of these municipalities took pride in their laws, and looking at the title pages one can sense the important role that these codes played in defining a municipality and its citizens.

As you explore the exhibition in the posts that follow, note the ways that the books’ owners marked and annotated them; the coexistence of printed and hand-written statutes; and the transition from the Latin of jurists and scholars to the Italian of merchants and politicians.

The Law Library’s Italian statute collection provides a rich resource not only for legal history, but also for the history of reading, print culture, manuscript culture, bookbinding, Italian social history, political history, and much more. In addition, the books are fascinating cultural artifacts. We welcome you to make use of them.

BENJAMIN YOUSEY-HINDES & MIKE WIDENER
Exhibit Curators

“The Flowering of Civil Law: Early Italian City Statutes in the Yale Law Library” is on display October 2008 through February 2009 in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

Image at right: Sicily (Kingdom). Regni Sicilie constitutiones per excellentissumum j.v.d. do. Andream de Isernia (Naples, 1533).

Now on exhibit...

Oct. 2008 – Feb. 2009
Rare Book Exhibition Gallery
Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library
Yale Law School

An exhibition highlighting the Lillian Goldman Law Library's outstanding collection of early Italian city statutes inaugurates the Law Library's new, state-of-the-art exhibition gallery. The exhibition, "The Flowering of Civil Law: Early Italian City Statutes in the Yale Law Library," debuts during the Yale Law School's annual Alumni Weekend, Oct. 3-4, 2008.

The Law Library's collection of Italian "statuta" is rivaled by few other U.S. libraries and surpassed by none. These municipal codes governed the dozens of Italian city-states that arose in the Middle Ages and persisted until the reunification of Italy in the late 19th century. The collection contains over 900 volumes of printed books and 60 bound manuscripts, dating from the 14th to 20th centuries, and representing over 380 municipalities and jurisdictions. In their mixing of Roman law, local law, and pragmatic innovations, the Italian municipal statutes became the prototype of European civil law.

The new Rare Books Exhibition Gallery is located in the lower level of the Lillian Goldman Law Library (Level L2), directly in front of the Paskus-Danziger Rare Book Reading Room. The exhibition cases are climate-controlled and protect the exhibit items from damage by ultra-violet light.

The exhibition was curated by Benjamin Yousey-Hindes, doctoral candidate in medieval history at Stanford University, and Mike Widener, Rare Book Librarian.

For those unable to visit the exhibit in person, the exhibit will appear in installments here on the Yale Law Library Rare Books Blog.

For more information, phone me at (203) 432-4494 or email me at <mike.widener[at]yale.edu>.

MIKE WIDENER
Rare Book Librarian