ABSTRACT
In 1716, the thirty-two-year-old Ludvig Holberg published a work on 'the law of nature and nations' that was substantially derived from Samuel Pufendorf's two main works on this subject. The legal role of the natural law that Holberg presented was part of its much wider social and political functions. In the early years of the century, Holberg's work on natural law thus fitted into, and probably strengthened, those aspects of higher education that were of particular social and political relevance. Holberg follows Pufendorf in drawing an analogy between the individual person who is subject to the law of nature and the state as an artificial person subject to the same law, which is then called the law of nations. Holberg's great distance from Thomasius is shown by his remarkable pronouncement that the divine positive law's treatment of marriage was a matter that he was happy to leave to the court of the theologians.
