Appendix CASE ONE - Collection Point® | The Total Digital Asset ...

94 Legal History in the Making
rights. Here fashion, coming from a historical political background, serves as
an aid to memory.
I hope that it will be evident not only that pictures can be very useful for
the legal historian but also that making good use of them is not easy. For legal
iconographical interpretation and legal iconology, next to a knowledge of legal
history, a certain knowledge of the history of art is indispensable. Sometimes
knowledge of the Bible, mythology, history and literature and, as shown, even
of the fashions of former centuries is also essential. That each period has
its own questions and therefore its own difficulties will be clear. When we
realize how great the influence of foreign countries was on our national art,
our national history, literature and philosophy, the importance of working on
similar collections in several countries of Europe will be recognized. Good
scholarship in this field is only possible through interaction, interaction of
available material, interaction of ideas, interaction between countries and
interaction between disciplines.
Illustrations from bygone ages can tell us, if rightly understood, a great
deal about law and justice in the times of our forefathers. They are the more
important as they give us not the written model rules but mostly the view of
non-lawyers, of the people who lived under those rules.