I 1 20 HARVARD LAW REVIEW that "three-fourths of the Code were extracted" " therefrom, and that "the law of contract is taken ahnost bodily from Domat and Pothier." ^° Domat, whose work on Lois Civiles had been first pubUshed in 1694, was one of the few French counterparts of the English institutional writers like Coke, Hale, and Blackstone, all of whose works were then current in England. In fact, French legal literature then, as compared with English, or even Spanish, was meager. It has even been characterized as "pitiable," ^^ though this hardly seems appropriate in view of other equally authoritative estimates of the preceding French jurists,^^ to say nothing of the encyclopedists who so profoundly influenced the legal as well as political philosophy of the Revolution. Their themes, however, were mostly remote from the paths followed by the framers of the Civil Code, who seem to have confined their study of commentaries to a few well-known ones which they, nevertheless, utilized thoroughly. Grandes Ordonnances. — " Certain parts (of the Roman law current in France) had already been codified," observes Esmein,^ " in the Grandes Ordonnances which were the work of D'Aguesseau." Three of these, framed by that eminent chancellor during the years 1731-47, were especially important sources. "Upon the topics which they covered," it has been said, " — wills, gifts, and entails — he virtually wrote in advance entire chapters of the future Civil Code of Napoleon," ^^ Other Royal Ordinances were utilized like that of April, 1667, relating to certificate of civil status, and to evidence; that of MouUns (1566) on the last-named subject, and the Edict of 1771 concerning mortgage redemption.^ " Professor Fisher in 9 Cambridge Modern History, 161. Of Pothier's works as a whole it has been said: "They extraordinarily simplified the work to be done by the framers of the Civil Code ; it has been said of them that they were an advance Commentary upon the Code." i Continental Legal History Series, 270. '° 9 Cambiudge Modern History, 162. » Id., 161.
- 2 "Their juridical tact, their ease of expression, their fine sense of analogy and
harmony, and (if they may be judged by the highest names among them) their pas- sionate devotion to their conceptions of justice, were as remarkable as the singular variety of talent which they included, a variety covering the whole groimd between the opposite poles of Cujas and Montesquieu, of D'Aguesseau and Dimioulin." Maine, Ancient Law, 80. " 6 Encyclopaedia Britannica, ii ed., 634.
- I Continental Legal History Series, 269. " Id., 286.
