The Godefroy Family of Scholars, 1580–1880

The Godefroy Family of Scholars, 1580–1880 gives an inside look at the workings of a scholarly dynasty: the roles played by wives, its training methods for children, their habits of correspondence, and the struggles that broke out when the family fought about the direction of their work.

Beginning with their influential editions of the Corpus Iuris Civilis and the Codex Theodosianus, the Godefroy dynasty built a family business that survived three centuries, drawing on their collective work in humanist law and French history. They married into other learned families, collaborated with their cousins, trained their sons, and passed down their papers, publishing projects, and positions as royal historiographers and archivists through the generations, creating a niche in scholarship and a reputation for erudition that they collectively defended from interlopers. They were but one of the most successful and longest lasting of the phenomenon of early modern scholarly families that staked their livelihoods on their expertise. Only by including the “family” as an actor within intellectual history can we appreciate how the methodologies of humanism were transmitted into the Enlightenment and beyond.

This book is intended for early modern historians of intellectual history, legal history, gender and family, and France.