170 //. FROM THE llOO'S TO THE 1800'S body that concerns us all remained so intact that Coke could promulgate this prodigious sentence and challenge the whole world to contradict it ? * I have not the power to tell and you to-day have not the time to hear that story as it should be told. A brief outline of what might be said is all that will be possible and more than will be tolerable. Robert Rede died in January, 1519. Let us remember for a moment where we stand at that date. The Emperor Maximilian also was dying. Henry VIII was reigning in England, Francis I in France, Charles I in Spain, Leo X at Rome. But come we to jurisprudence. Is it beneath the historic muse to notice that young Mr. More, the judge's son, had lately lectured at Lincoln's Inn ? ^ Perhaps so. At all events for a while we will speak of more resonant exploits. We could hardly (so I learn at second-hand) fix a better date than that of Rede's death for the second new birth of Roman law. More's friend Erasmus had turned his back on England and was by this time in correspondence with two accomplished jurists, the Italian Andrea Alciato and the German Ulrich Zasi. They and the French scholar Guillaume Bude were publishing books which mark the begin- ning of a new era.® Humanism was renovating Roman law.
- Sohm, Frankisches Recht und romisches Recht, 1880, p. 77: " . . .
Thatsachen in Folge deren Renaissance an dem englischen Rechtsleben so gut wie spurlos voriiberging." "* Thomas More was Autumn Reader in 1511, Lent Reader in 1515: Black Book of Lincoln's Inn, vol. i., pp. 162, 175. ' Etienne Pasquier, Recherches sur la France, ix. 39 (cited by Dareste, Essai sur Francois Ilotman, Paris, 1850, p. 17) : " I>e siecle de I'an mil cinq cens nous apporta une nouvelle estude de loix qui fut de faire un mariage de I'estude de droict avec les lettres humaines par un langage latin net et poly: et trouve trois premiers entrepreneurs de ce nouveau mesnage, Guillaume Bude, Francois, enfant de Paris, Andr6 Alciat, Italien Milanois, Udaric Zaze, Alleman ne en la ville de Constance." Savigny, Geschichte des romischen Rechts im Mittelalter, ed. 2, vol. vi., p. 421 : " Nun sind es zwei Manner, vcelche als Stifter und Fiihrer der neuen Schule angesehen werden konnen: Alciat in Italien und Frank- reich, Zasius in Deutschland. Die ersten Schriften, vi^orin die neue Methode erscheint, fallen in das zweite Decennium des fUnfzehnten [corr. sechzehnten] Jahrhunderts." Andrea Alciato was born at Alzate near Milan in 1492, studied at Pavia and Bologna, in 1518 was called to teach at Avignon, went to Milan in 1520, to Bourges in 1528, was afterwards at Pavia, Bologna and Ferrara, died at Pavia in 1550 (Fertile, Storia del diritto italiano, ed. 2, vol. ii. (2), p. 428). Ulrich Zasi was born in 1461, studied at Tiibingen and at Freiburg where he became town-clerk and afterwards
