Early Italian Statutes: Agricultural Statutes of Rome

The Flowering of Civil Law: Early Italian City Statutes in the Yale Law Library

Papal States. Gli statuti dell’agricoltura con varie osservazioni, bolle, decisioni della S. Ruota, e decreti intorno alla medesima (Rome 1718). Acquired with the Albert S. Wheeler Fund, May 2008.

(View the Papal States on a map: “Stato Pontificio”.)

The agricultural statutes of Rome were first collected during the pontificate of Gregory XII in the early 1400s, and underwent several revisions and reforms before they were promulgated for the last time in 1848. Yale Law Library owns six different editions of this wide-ranging collection of regulations and advice of use to lawyers, agriculturalists (agronomo), and rural merchants in the Papal States. The 1718 edition shown here was the first to be translated from Latin to Italian, and includes a twenty-six page illustrated treatise on locusts.

BENJAMIN YOUSEY-HINDES & MIKE WIDENER

Exhibit Curators

“The Flowering of Civil Law: Early Italian City Statutes in the Yale Law Library” is on display October 2008 through February 2009 in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.