Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/365

 Lau: Urkundcnbiuh der Reiclisstadt Frankfurt 355 work, also the disadvantage. Students of a new generation found its references and explanations insufficient, its lack of an index a constant source of needless labor. They found also — as various archives came to be better ordered — that it gave by no means all the available sources upon medieval Frankfort ; not only for the fourteenth century, which it pretended to cover by a selection, but as well for the period down to 1300, which it professed to cover fully. The entire work, through little or no fault of Boehmer's, called for redoing. Accordingly, as long ago as 1880 the administrators of Boehmer's estate provided for a new edition of the Frankfort Codex. The work upon it, however, advanced but too slowly until it was entrusted, in 1897, to Friedrich Lau, who was able to give it for more than a year and a half his entire time. By help of the many copies and collations made by his predecessors, Grotefend and von Nathusius, and by much research on his own part, Dr. Lau has brought together, along with most of the pieces in the original edition, a great amount of new matter. Boehmer's single quarto contained, all told down to the year 1400, 1,026 docu- ments. The two quartos of the new edition have 1,699 numbers, to- gether with some additional matter, and go only to 1340. Also, the definite and concise references and explanations accompanying the successive pieces, and the carefully-wrought index at the end of each volume, show a clear appreciation of what present-day students require of such collections. Errors in detail were not wholly to be avoided; scholars of special competence in the local history have pointed out a considerable number of them in the first volume (von Nathusius, in Wcsldcutschc Zcitsclirift fiir Geschichte und Kunst, 21, pp. 211-216; Reimer, in Gbttingischc Gclehrte Anseigen, 164, pp. 826-830). Espe- cially, the index, careful as it is, still is not so helpful as it might be with regard to forms of names and locations of places. These short- comings, however, are of relatively little moment; in the main, the editor has done his part with entire success. With this enlarged and properly equipped body of sources, it will be possible to extend in many directions present knowledge of the people of medieval Frankfort. Their local public institutions can now be better known. Relations they had with the emperor, and with others outside the city, can be seen in more detail. Probably, however, no sides of their history will profit more strikingly than those relating to economic and social conditions, especially in the first half of the four- teenth century. On such matters some of the new pieces will prove of quite unusual interest, notably the wills in nos. 377, 412, 425, 475. 517, 575, and 621 of vol. II. The new Codex thus is in a way to give aid not only on the sorts of questions that Boehmer had most in view, but also on others which have come within the vision of historical students chiefly since Boehmer's time. Dr. Lau takes leave of the work with the second volume. His