The Dan Coquillette Gifts: Treasures from a Dean, Scholar & Teacher (Spring 2024)

[The Pisan or Florentine Pandects] Digestorum Pandectarum. Florence, 1553. 

This is the first printed edition of the Digest or Pandects, a compendium of the writings from Roman jurists like Ulpian, Paulus, and Gaius. It originated from a 6th/7th-century manuscript that came to the Medici family in Florence in 1406. The set, a pinnacle of Renaissance printing, took over 12 years to complete. It includes dozens of historiated initials, including the one shown here of a battle scene. Professor Coquillette acquired this treasure from a local bookseller at a student-friendly price during his time at Oxford.

Institutiones Imperiales. Paris, 1507.

Students always marvel at the conciseness of the Institutes, the law student textbook portion of the Corpus Juris Civilis (“body of Roman law”). As Professor Coquillette writes in his textbook, the Institutes drew on the Digest and became one of the most widely read and influential law books of all time. Students in law programs across the world still study it.  This early-16th-century printing of the great Roman law textbook includes a woodcut illustration of Emperor Justinian flanked by lawyers and clergy—with two dogs playing in the foreground. On the right, you can see the original text of the Institutes in that central “box.” The later commentary from jurists (known as the “gloss”) flows around it.

Ranulf de Glanville, Tractatus de Legibus et Consuetudinibus Regni Anglie.  London: Richard Tottel, [1554?].

Considered the first English legal treatise, Glanville’s Treatise on the Laws and Customs of the Kingdom of England essentially is a procedural manual and form book, with over eighty model writs (roughly equivalent to modern summonses and complaints) and commentary to guide practitioners in the King’s Courts. Glanville (d. 1190) was Chief Justice under Henry II. By this time, the Normans had established a professional bureaucracy and judiciary, a system of central courts, a rudimentary theory of constitutionalism, and the beginnings of a professional legal literature.  

Year Book of Edward III. London: Robert Redman, 1534.

During the class discussion of professional legal history in his Anglo-American Legal History course, Professor Coquillette teaches students about Year Books, an ancestor of the modern case reporter. Spanning from 1272 through 1535, they were compiled anonymously, probably by law students. The “reports” focus on the complex procedural exchange between lawyers and judges—not on the legal reasoning or the final decision, which often goes unreported. This volume contains cases from the Hilary term (“de termino Hillarii”) of the 39th year of the reign of Edward III (“Anno xxxix E. Tercii”)—hence “Year Book.”

Edward Coke, The First Part of the Institutes of the Lawes of England, or a Commentary upon Littleton. London, 1639.

Sir Edward Coke (1552–1634) was Chief Justice of the King Bench’s and an important 16th/17th-century political figure. His legacy as a legal writer includes his Reports and his Institutes, a four-part series of legal treatises on topics including property, contracts, criminal law, and jurisdiction. This first part is structured as a commentary on Thomas Littleton’s Tenures, a renowned treatise on property law (a 1592 edition is featured in this exhibition). The three columns of text represent Littleton’s work in Law French, the same in English, and then Coke’s commentaries on the right in English. Littleton is depicted on the left in his Serjeant-at-Law coif.

Thomas Smith, Angli De Republica Anglorum. Leiden, 1641.

A significant portion of Professor Coquillette’s scholarship and gifts covers the English civilians, a specialist group of lawyers that practiced civil law (derived from Roman law, in contrast to English common law). Their primary areas of practice were ecclesiastical (mainly divorce and probate) and admiralty (disputes arising out of maritime trade). 

Smith was an early civilian writer. He trained in civil law at Padua and became the first Regius Professor of Civil Law at Cambridge in 1540 upon that chair’s founding by Henry VIII. This is a Latin, Elzevir press edition of his Commonwealth of England, an explicitly comparative work that compares the laws and constitution of England to those of other European nations.

Francis Bacon, The Elements of the Common Lawes of England . . . A Collection of Some Principall Rules and Maximes. London, 1639.

One of Professor Coquillette’s scholarly and book-collecting interests has been Francis Bacon (1561–1626), the English scientist, philosopher, politician, and lawyer. This is the earliest of Bacon’s legal texts, written around 1597 but only published posthumously. It is a selection of 25 maxims from common law and civilian sources, such as “Necessity introduces an exception into the rights of individuals.” Bacon follows the brief statement of the maxim with analysis, examples, and exceptions. Rather disjointed and mysterious, Bacon’s Maximes has been recognized as one of the first English legal works to delve into policy considerations behind existing legal doctrines. 

Francis Bacon, The Wisedome of the Ancients. London, 1619.

Professor Coquillette is currently writing a book on this tiny Bacon volume, which analyzes and describes 31 Ancient Greek myths. It opens with the myth of Cassandra, the Trojan priestess who was given the gift of prophecy but cursed to never be believed. It was the most popular and widely printed of Bacon’s works during his life. The book will argue that it was written in code and actually contains a powerful summary of Bacon’s fundamental (controversial) ideas.

Book of Hours. Italy?, c. 1400.

Designed for lay people, books of hours contain prayers to be said at regular intervals throughout the day. Donated by Professor Coquillette in 2004, this book—possibly connected to the Grimaldi family of Monaco—is the oldest in the collection and the only illuminated manuscript. It probably was transcribed in northern Italy in the late 14th-early 15th century. 

Thomas Hobbes, The Leviathan. London, 1651 [actually c. 1670].

This is the famous “Bear” edition of Hobbes’s great work of political philosophy. It is identical to the actual 1651 first edition except for the bear illustration in the printer’s ornament on the title page, just below “Hobbes.” Note the famous engraved ornamental frontispiece showing a crowned and armed monarch (“sovereign”) made up of hundreds of tiny people. Hobbes advocated for a social contract theory in which people cede individual liberty to an absolute monarch in exchange for safety and security. He felt this type of government was best suited to avoid the chaos wrought by events like the English Civil War.