Codex Justinianus

Codex Justinianus
Anton Koberger, 1488
JUSTINIANUS (482-565). Codex Justinianus. With the Glossa ordinaria of Accursius. Nuremberg: Anton Koberger, 30 January 1488.

An early and attractive printing of one of the foundational texts of the Western legal tradition. Early in his reign, the Emperor Justinian I asked jurists to create a new compilation of Roman law, collecting and harmonizing the imperial constitutions (imperial pronouncements having the force of law) that had been issued since the second century C.E. Promulgated in 529 and revised in 534, the Codex Justinianus became the foundation of the larger Corpus iuris civilis. In the Middle Ages this compilation became the basis for the study of Roman law and also influenced the canon law of the Catholic Church. In the early thirteenth century Accursius, a Roman jurist who taught at the University of Bologna (the center of European legal studies), undertook to digest the many thousands of comments on the text by medieval scholars into a comprehensive gloss. This 'glossa ordinaria' became the standard interpretative accompaniment to the Corpus and to the Code itself. This edition, printed by Anton Koberger, offers the attractions of a complex mise-en-page, woodcut illustrations, and copious use of fanciful red-printed initials. HC 9609*; BMC II 432; GW 7735; BSB-Ink C-568; Bod-inc J-273; Schramm XVII, 8; Goff J-581; ISTC ij00581000.

Super-median folio (340 x 235mm). 406 leaves. Printed in black and red. Illuminated initial H in blue on burnished gold ground within square parti-colored frame, 10 woodcut illustrations, one of which is hand-colored, paragraphs and small initials printed in red (paper flaws to a few blank margins, soiling and fraying to lower corners of first and last quires). Contemporary pigskin over wooden boards (worn, rebacked, repaired, later endpapers, lacking clasps). Provenance: Ministerial Bibliothek Uelzen (inkstamp on blank first leaf).