The Rise of Legal History in the Renaissance
Donald R. Kelley
In the late 1550's Etienne Pasquier, a rising young lawyer man of letters, addressed letter to Jacques Cujas, professor law at University Valence, formerly Bourges. have decided research antiquities France, he wrote, and so I called my book 'les recherches.' The enterprise is great labor requiring study many old books. If you anything on subject, would do me favor by sending it me.'' Now this confession may not be quite dramatic as Gibbon's account decision took while musing among Roman ruins, yet does comparable significance. For here we can see only launching one most ambitious original scholarly enterprises Renaissance but also chief sources modern historical scholarship. mean that somewhat misunderstood branch philology which call legal humanism. A couple years before, Cujas had begun publish classics humanism, his Observations Emendations, brilliant collection legal, linguistic, criticisms grew monumental proportions in next forty years. Pasquier was beginning assemble similar gallery monographs devoted past French civilization, too devote better part life almost sixty task.2 What doing for law, short, restoring bit proper perspective, proposed entire range history. want exaggerate parallel between greatest humanists, sixteenth-century historians. Between them there were several awkward barriers well:
History and Theory