Form and content in early modern legal books: Bridging material bibliography with history of legal thought

According to common sense, a book is a way of conveying ideas. On their own books do not alter or add anything to what authors want to communicate to readers. The most recent history of books has produced a Copernican shift from this simplistic view of the nature of these companions. Books do matter. Their material nature—from page-layout, to typographical devices, graphics, format and even their binding—conveys meaning. This article seeks to relate intellectual shifts in early modern legal theory to actual changes in the ideas dominating the understanding of law. The paper would like to examine the problematic the imperial position traditional legal history gives to an individual ‘author’ (reviving the question once posed by Foucault: ‘what is an author?’). Is the author merely an intellectual evolution in the creation of new figures of legal discourse?