Böhmer, Just Henning (Bohemerus Iustus Henningius)

BÖHMER, Just Henning (Bohemerus Iustus Henningius). - Protestant jurist, b. in Hannover on 27 Aug. 1674 to a family of Bohemian refugees, d. in Halle on 29 Aug. 1749. He received his doctorate in law at Jena. He was a teacher of law at Halle and a privy councillor under Frederick William of Prussia.

His output is divided between civil and canon law. As to the former, he is numbered among the followers of the German pandectist method, and he exercised a broad influence also on the evolution of Prussian legislation. Besides several dissertations on Roman law, later collected by his son under the title Exercitationes ad Pandectas (Hannover 1745-64), he wrote an important Introductio in ius digestorum.

No less was his fame as a canonist, although his strong attachment to the Protestant current must be kept in mind. 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 particular dissertations, in this field too he wrote a mighty work, in which he attempted to set out the ecclesiastical law of the Protestants, 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 was the editor and popularizer of the works of others, such as that of Petrus de Marca (v.), De concordia sacerdotii et imperii seu de libertatibus ecclesiae gallicanae libri VIII, Leipzig 1708; of the writings of Claude Fleury, and of others. These editorial labors of his too are determined by his reformist tendency and by his stance denying 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).

Antonio Rota