Devising law: On the philosophy of legal emblems

Early modern lawyers, civilian and common alike, developed their very own ars iuris or art of law. A variety of legal disciplines had always relied in part upon the use of visual representations, upon images and statuary to convey authority and sovereign norm. Military, religious, administrative and legal images found juridical codification and expression in collections of signs of office (notitia dignitatum), in heraldic codes, in genealogical devises (impresa) and then finally in the juridical invention in the mid-sixteenth century of the legal emblem book. This chapter traces the complex lineage of the emblem book and argues that the visual depiction of authority and norm that it promulgated so successfully laid down an early modern structure and implicit regulation of vision. The mens emblematica of the humanist lawyers was also the inauguration of a visiocratic regime that continues in significant part into the present and multiple technologies of vision.