Incunable Collection

The invention and spread of the new technology of printing texts with movable type in the fifteenth century coincided with the movement in European cities to reform and codify local laws. Very often the first book printed in a city or town was that locality's laws and ordinances. The Law Library possess a large collection of incunable editions - i.e. books printed before 1501 - of law texts, almost 550 titles.

Detail of woodcut. Click on image for full view.

Nuremberg. Newe Reformacion. (Nuremberg : Anton Koberger, 1484)

Very often the first book printed in a city or town was that locality's laws and ordinances. The city of Nuremberg's laws were first printed in 1484 by Anton Koberger. The hand-colored woodcut, which shows the Nuremberg city arms flanked by St. James the Greater and St. Lawrence, is the work of the Nuremberg artist Michael Wohlgemut (1434-1519). Primarily a painter, Wohlgemut also produced woodcuts for book illustration.

Ulrich Molitor. De laniis et phitonicis mulieribus. (Cologne : Cornelis de Zieritzee, circa 1499/1500)

A graduate of the University of Pavia, where he studied canon law, Molitor made his reputation as a lawyer in his native Constance. Sigismund, Archduke of Austria, asked him his opinion regarding the reality of spells and witchcraft. The resulting treatise, written as a dialogue, was first printed in Cologne in about 1499, and became so popular that it was almost immediately reissued twice. The Law Library has a copy of the second issue, has a woodcut showing witches in half-animal, half-human form, about to fly off on broomsticks to a coven meeting.

Thomas Littleton. Tenores novelli. (London : Johannes Lettou and William de Machlinia, ca. 1482?).

This is a copy of the first edition of the first printed English legal treatise. There are only nine surviving copies known of this edition; this scarcity reflects the work's popularity and importance. The Law Library's copy has both extensive contemporary and early marginal notes.