A Recent Gift

We are excited to introduce this new gift from a long-time friend and benefactor, Professor Michael Hoeflich, the John H. & John M. Kane Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Kansas Law School. Professor Hoeflich gifted the BC Law rare books program a lovely collection of Roman law books in 2009, and has now followed that gift with the donation of this 1616 Heidelberg edition of Fragmenta XII Tabularum by Iacobi Gothofredo. This important work represents Gothofredo's attempt at reconstructing the fragments of the Twelve Tables, the ancient Roman law that was carved into ivory tablets and publicly displayed in the Roman Forum. This rare volume contains plates with reconstructions of those tables.

Gothofredo (often referenced as Gothofredus or as Jacques Godefroy) was born in France in 1587 to a family of legal scholars and historians. In addition to this work, he also is responsible for an incredibly influential edition of the Codex Theodosianus, an important compilation of Roman law prepared under Byzantine Emperor Theodosius II in the 5th century.