Display of Justinian’s Novellae.

We were privileged to welcome a visiting group from the European Law Students Association in Austria for a tour of the Library and a discussion on the modern legal scene in Europe. To mark the occasion some of the Signet Library’s extensive collections of European law were on display. These included the 1540 first printing of the Hexabiblon, which formed the basis of the Greek legal code after 1828, the Scottish Enlightenment scholar Thomas Ruddiman’s own copy of Justinian’s Novellae (the Geneva edition of 1558 edited by the Scottish intellectual Henry Scrimgeour) and a 1523 commentary on Justinian’s Institutes by one of the last of the great pre-Reformation legal scholars Giasone del Maino.