GOTHOFRED, or GODEFROY, DENIS or DIONYSIUS, the most celebrated jurisconsult of his age, was born at Paris in 1549. After having completed his classical studies he applied himself to that of law, which he prosecuted at the universities of Louvain, Cologne, and Heidelberg. On his return to France, in consequence of his profession of the Reformed faith, he found himself obliged to retire to Geneva, where, in 1580, he was nominated to a chair of law. Henri IV. appointed him magistrate of Gex in 1589; but this city having the year after been taken by the Duke of Savoy, his house was pillaged, and no resource remained for him but to pass into Germany. He, however, proceeded no farther than Strasbourg, where he taught the Pandects from 1591 till 1600, when the elector palatine called him to Heidelberg. But the proceedings of his colleagues forced him six months afterwards to return to Strasbourg, where he remained three years more; at the end of which time he consented to resume his functions at Heidelberg, upon an
assurance which was given him that he should have nothing to apprehend from the jealousy of the other professors. It was only then that his countrymen became sensible of the fault which had been committed in not endeavouring to retain in France a man of such distinguished merit, and he was offered the chair which Cujas had just left vacant at Bourges; but he declined the offer upon the ground of his age, and alleged the same excuse in opposition to all the instances which were made to draw him to Angers, to Valence, and to other universities of France and Germany. In 1618 he was sent as deputy by the elector palatine to Louis XIII., who received him well, and solicited him to remain in Paris; but Godefroy had become attached to Heidelberg, where he enjoyed all the consideration due to his talents, and where he desired to end his days. In this expectation, however, he was disappointed. The war, which extended to the palatine, forced him to return a third time to Strasbourg, where, oppressed with grief and infirmities, he expired on the 7th of September 1622, in the seventy-third year of his age. His friend Bernegger pronounced his funeral oration, which is printed in the Opuscula of Loisel. Of all the works of Godefroy, that which does him the greatest honour, and ensures him a permanent rank amongst jurisconsults, is his edition of the Corpus Juris Civilis, the publication of which forms an epoch in the history of the science. His text is that which has been adopted for ordinary reading in the universities and at the bar, and his notes are much esteemed. The Corpus of Godefroy has passed through a number of editions, but the most valuable are those of Paris, Vitré, 1628, in two vols. folio, and Amsterdam, Elzevir, 1668, also in two vols. folio. Among the other works of Godefroy may be mentioned, Notæ in Cicéronem, Lyons, 1588 and 1591, in 4to; Antiquæ Historiæ ex xxvii. auctoribus contextæ libri sex, Basil, 1590, in 8vo; Conjecturæ, variæ lectiones, et loci communes in Senecæ, printed at the end of the works of Seneca; Auctores Latine lingue in unum redacti corpus, adjectis notis, Geneva, 1595 and 1602, in 4to; Maintenue et Défense des Princes souverains et Eglises Chrétiennes contre les attentats et excommunications des Papes de Rome, 1594, in 8vo; Dissertatio de Nobilitate, Spire, 1611, in 4to; Statuta Gallia juxta Francorum, Burgundiorum, Gothorum, et Anglorum in ea dominantium Consuetudines, Frankfurt, 1611, in folio. Gothofred was the author of a very large number of works besides those here mentioned. A complete list of them will be found in Sennier's Histoire Littéraire de Genève, which also gives a biographical memoir of Gothofred himself and of his son James, who, as a jurist and general scholar, was hardly, if at all, inferior to his father. The son's name will be long remembered by his edition of the Theodosian Code, which Gibbon pronounced "a full and capacious repository of the political state of the empire during the 4th and 5th centuries." (J. B.—E.)