BÖHMER, Johann Friedrich. — Historian, b. 22 Apr. 1795 at Frankfurt am Main, d. there 22 Oct. 1863. Archivist and librarian in his native city, he served as secretary and treasurer to Pertz in the society of the *Monumenta Germaniae Historica*. To him are owed the *Regesta Imperii*, a fundamental publication for medievalists, appearing from 1833 onward and embracing a period from the year 911 to 1347. A Protestant, he had a lively admiration for the medieval papacy and regarded the so-called Reformation as a grave harm to the German people. Ranke judged B. to be “a son of the Middle Ages born in an age not his own, an orphan in a world foreign to him.”
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BÖHMER, Just Henning (Bohemerus Iustus Hennignius). — Protestant jurist, b. at Hanover of a family of Bohemian refugees on 27 Aug. 1674, d. at Halle on 29 Aug. 1749. He took his doctorate in law at Jena. He taught law at Halle and served as privy councillor under Frederick William of Prussia.
His scholarly output divides between civil and canon law. As regards the former, he is numbered among the followers of the German Pandectist method and exercised wide influence upon the evolution of Prussian legislation. Besides several dissertations on Roman law, later collected by his son under the title *Exercitationes ad Pandectas* (Hanover 1745-64), he wrote an important *Introductio in ius digestorum*.
No less was his fame as a canonist, though it must be noted that he remained firmly attached to the Protestant cause. In the systematization of canon law he is credited with introducing for the first time the distinction between public and private law in his *Institutiones iuris canonici* (Jena 1738). Besides numerous special dissertations in this field, he also produced a weighty work in which he attempted to set forth Protestant ecclesiastical law while maintaining in its exposition the order of material followed by the collection of decretals: *Ius ecclesiasticum protestantium usum modernum iuris canonici iuxta seriem iuris canonici ostendens* (Halle 1714-17).
He edited and disseminated the works of others, such MARCIA (v.), *De concordia sacerdotii et imperii seu de libertatibus ecclesiae gallicanae libri VIII*, Leipzig 1708; the writings of Claude Fleury; and others. Even these editorial labors were determined by his reformist tendency and his rejection of the primacy of the Roman Church.
He was also the author of one of the first critical editions of the *Corpus iuris canonici* (Halle 1747).