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part iv • intellectual legal history • søren koch Ditlev Tamm has concluded that the book had ‘ingen videnskabelig karakter’ (no scholarly merit), and was intended to be the textbook for students of Roman law, as required by the University of Copenhagen’s ordinance for legal examinations.34 The intended audience was thus originally students of law and the fine arts, as was spelt out in a supplement (which talked of iuris et honestarum atrium studiosis adolescentibus, the young who study law and the fine arts). The work’s nature as a basic textbook was further emphasized by the dedication to the author’s mentor, the Chancellor of Denmark – and chancellor of the University of Copenhagen – Niels Kaas, where the author underlines the function of his ‘collection’.35 And yet it was found both in institutional libraries and the private collections of judges, advocates, and high-ranking officials as late as the eighteenth century.36 It helped disseminate knowledge of basic, abstract principles of Roman law (regulis iuris antiqui), which were commonly regarded an expression of theratio scriptainherent in Roman law, and thus as a universal guideline for justice.37 Even though there is little evidence that Danish-Norwegian judges referred to these principles in court, the book’s adherence to the ‘golden rules’ set out in Ulpian’s famous phrase in the Justinian Digest 1.1.10, ‘honeste vivere, alterum non laedere, suum quique tribuere’ (‘to live honestly, to injure no one, to give to each his own’) and its circulation among the intellectual elite certainly contributed to the common understanding of central concepts of justice. The legal authority of these principles thus derived not directly from 34 Ibid. 57. The university ordinance (Fundatz) of 1539 made Roman law mandatory for law students, but until 1736 there was no requirement to study law or qualify in order to practice as a lawyer or judge. 35 Niels Kaas was a disciple of Niels Hemmingsen and had studied theology and law under Philipp Melanchthon in Wittenberg. He was a representative of the new Protestant intellectual elite, promoting the dissemination of knowledge to wider groups of society. Some of his letters to this effect are available at Early Modern Letters Online, emlo.bodleian. ox.ac.uk, s.v. ‘Niels Kaas’. 36 Tamm 1992, 58; using extensive surveys of auction catalogues, Gina Dahl, Books in Early Modern Norway (Leiden: Brill 2011) shows the book was frequently found in the libraries of the intellectual elite, including lawyers and judges. 37 Peter Stein, Regulæ iuris: From Juristic Rules to Legal Maxims (Edinburgh: EUP, 1996), see also id., ‘The digest Title de diversis regulis iuris antique and the General Principles of Law’, in Ralph A. Newman (ed.), Essays in Jurisprudence in Honour of Roscoe Pound(Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1962), 1 ff. 208

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