JUSTINIAN.

CORPUS JURIS CIVILIS. Novellae Constitutiones. Novellarum Constitutionum D N Iustiniani principis, quae exstant, & ut exstant, volumen. [Trans. Gregorius Haloander].

      First separate edition of the Latin translation by Gregorius Haloander of the Novellae Constitutiones; Haloander (1501-1531) had edited the Greek text in 1531 and his Latin translation had first been added to the Basel edition of 1541.The Novellae are supplements to Justinian’s Digests, Institutes, and Codex, and survive in three different versions: two early Latin versions, and one in Greek. The Greek collection (on which Haloander based his translation) was made in the late sixth century for the use of Oriental lawyers.This edition was printed by Charlotte Guillard, the foremost woman-printer of the French Renaissance (see B. Beech, Renaissance Quarterly, XXXVI [1983], 345-367).From the library of the antiquary and man of affairs John Hooker, alias Vowell (c. 1527-1601), with his ownership inscriptions on title “Jo. Hooker al. Vowell meus verus est dominus” and “Jo. Vowelli al Hookeri suus liber”. “Vowell alias Hooker”, as he is regularly known (a fifteenth-century forebear had acquired the name Hooker on marrying a Hampshire heiress), was born into an established Exeter family; both his father and grandfather had served as mayor. His nephew was Richard Hooker, author of Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity.Vowell read civil law at Oxford, but left without taking a degree to travel on the Continent, where he lived and studied theology with Peter Martyr at Strasbourg. A second trip abroad, this time to France, was thwarted by the outbreak of war, and he was forced to return home and “dryven to take a wyffe”.Having turned down a post at the University of Salamanca, he began working for Miles Coverdale (bishop of Exeter 1551–53, and likewise a student of Peter Martyr). In 1555, Vowell was appointed the first chamberlain of Exeter, and was involved in a number of good works in the city. His next position (1568) was in the service of Sir Peter Carew in Ireland as his legal adviser, where he also sat in the Dublin Parliament. On Carew’s death in 1575, Vowell returned to Exeter and represented the city at Westminster in 1571 and 1586. The journal he kept of parliamentary proceedings, discovered in the nineteenth century stowed under the rafters of Exeter Guildhall, was the first of its kind.Vowell then turned scholar, editing the second edition of Holinshed’s Chronicles (1587), the edition used by Shakespeare as the principal source for the history plays. Vowell’s other antiquarian interests had a local focus, and his Description of the City of Exeter and Catalogue of the Bishops give a vivid and detailed picture of the city and its government.From the Sunderland library (with shelf-mark), third portion, sale July 1882, lot 6963 (second item). Paris, Charlotte Guillard, 1542.