PREFACE TO THE READER. 7

And it is to be ranked among the better ones. Finally, Dionysius Gothofredus almost entirely dedicated himself to the volumes of laws. A man of inexhaustible and stupendous industry, when he saw that Accursius had collected with great success the notes of the ancient Interpreters of Law—namely Irnerius, Martinus, Hugolinus, Bulgarus, Rofridus, Alricus, Azo, and others—he judged that he should employ for himself the Neoterics modern authors such as Budeus, Alciatus, Zasius, Augustinus, Duarenus, Brissonius, Cujacius, Connanus, and writers from almost every field of literature. In this, he certainly made the effort worthwhile, since one of the later JCtis Jurisconsults brought more light to the laws than that rude crowd of Glossators.

This body of law, illustrated with marginal notes, first appeared at Geneva in the year 1583, which edition was followed by a second, third, and fourth of the repeated lecture; in the final one, he writes that he served the public cause of literature by writing for twenty-six years. Nor should Gothofredus be defrauded of the merit he deserves, even if he did not reach the glory of the erudition of the younger Jac. Gothofredus, and his notes ought to be estimated by the dignity of the authors from whose writings they were excerpted. Yet this edition of Gothofredus was worn by the hands of many and was received with much applause in the forums and schools. Often reprinted afterward, it was, due to the carelessness of booksellers, repeatedly more corrupted and anxiously awaited medicinal hands. Nor were there wanting those who, in more recent editions, observed the impression with greater care; hence the Frankfurt edition of the year 1663 is also commended above others.

However, Simon van Leeuwen, a Jurisconsult of Lyon, left everyone behind; he applied every effort for a more enlarged and corrected edition to be made by the society of Amsterdam and Leiden. And indeed, as far as the Digests are concerned, he consulted—beyond the edition of the Florentine text by Haloander, Russardus, Contius, Hottomannus, Charonda, and Pacius—the vulgar method of numbering to avoid all confusion in the books of the Interpreters of Law. He inserted the Greek text of certain constitutions; he interposed the epitome of the Novels, which is accustomed to go by the name of the Authentics, among the individual laws of the Codex, noting the title and number, whence and from which Novels they were taken. He drew out the Greek Novels from the edition of Henricus Scrimgerus and Antonius Contius with the old and received interpretation, to which he subjoined the Constitutions of Justin the Younger, Tiberius, and other Emperors after Justinian, and he also wove in the laws of the Feuds in their customary place. Finally, at the end, he added the remains of Ante-Justinian jurisprudence, the 12 Tables, and fragments of Gaius, Ulpian, Paul, and Papian. The Consular Fasti and the Chronology of both the Eastern and Western Empire by Marq. Freherus impose the final touch.

The marginal notes added by Dionysius Gothofredus greatly exhausted Leeuwen; for they teemed with thousands of errors in citations, from which it was a long and tedious labor to free such a vast work. These having been corrected, he added new notes from Antonius Anselmus, a Jurisconsult of Antwerp, who had spent fifty years and more in practicing and turning over the law, containing among other things new remissions of similar or contrary laws making for the genuine interpretation of each law, as well as the observations of Antonius Augustinus, Goveanus, Vacconius, Bellonius, Contius, Revardus, Robertus, Alciatus, Hottomannus, Charonda, Cujacius, Leoninus, Salmasius, and Grotius, so that this edition has hitherto been held in great value and has surpassed all preceding ones in its elegance and corrected purity.

But not a few things escaped the care of Leeuwen himself, or the attention of the Printer. He indeed promises in the preface to the reader: "In the correction, nothing that pertained to total perfection has been omitted, and no errors remain, either in the text of the law or in the citations of the laws; or if any have by chance escaped human industry, they will be so few that he can nonetheless boast with the best right that a more corrected Body of Law has never before appeared."