ABSTRACT
The Italian jurist Andrea Alciato, one of the founders of the modern legal tradition, was much more famous in his day for a book of satirical emblems than for any of his learned treatises on the meaning of legal words. He was more widely known, much better read, and of far greater popular influence on account of his Little Book of Emblems – Emblematum libellus – than for any of his juristic writings. Alciato’s emblems, first printed in 1531, went to over 200 editions in the following two centuries. 1 It was the first book of its kind. In a single accidental stroke he founded the genre of emblem books and his illustrated epigrams or formulae were repeated by countless followers, imitators and epigones. An untold success and yet the book, according to Alciato’s letter to his publisher was a joke intended for a friend on the occasion of the Saturnalia. 2 It was composed during the course of the festival (festivis horis) and was intended to create pleasure, to surprise, to alleviate boredom, to allay sorrow, to prick the spirit, to inspire and to arouse. 3 As the choice of the Latin libellus suggests, the book was satirical, fundamentally radical and in a more modern idiom, potentially libelous.
