The printing press and European legal history, 1500–1800

The project Bibliography of European Legal History catalogues the production of law books from the 16th to the 18th century. It is intended not merely to provide historians with a bibliographical resource, but also to uncover the patterns of production and dissemination of legal texts in the modern period. It suggests that the disintegration of medieval legal unity led to the formation of three legal families (Rechtskreise) in continental Europe: Protestant Germany and the Netherlands, the centralised kingdom of France, and the Baroque, Counter-Reformation legal culture of Spain and Italy.