De adipiscenda et retinenda possessione amplissima et doctissima commentaria, nunquam hactenus edita; haec quam sint omnibus utilia, commemorare, necessarium est minime; cum ipsa de se ipsis aperte loquantur; adiectae sunt rerum notabilium summae ac index copiosissimus

by Giacomo Menochio

Venice: Giovanni Battista Somasco, 1571

[32], 90, [2], 91-169 leaves | Folio | *^4 a-d^6 e^4 A-P^6 chi^2 Q-2D^6 2E^8(-2E8 blank) | 313 x 215 mm

First edition of this influential treatise on the law of possession by the accomplished Paduan civil lawyer, "at the time one of the most sought-after of the Italian jurists" (Graheli). His work cast a long shadow, and this text (like others he penned) was frequently reprinted through the end of the 17th century. This was one of "two important treatises and commentaries on possession; he collected, subdivided into topics and discussed hundreds of questions (quaestiones), in every branch of law, in which the legal rules or the doctrine had left discretion (arbitrium) to the judge. Judicial discretion being broad, the author intended to rein it in to within more definite boundaries, based on arguments of the doctors of the ius commune...His work was widely used and cited by the doctrine and legal practice of his time and later, addressed to practitioners but enhanced with precise knowledge also of a large amount of legal sources and statutory norms" (Padoa-Schioppa). ¶ Here in a singular Italian binding of plain boards brushed with ink in bold vertical stripes, likely 18th-century. We're rather struck by the stark geometric modernity of the design. We've seen nothing like it. We find in it a faint echo of a Venetian humanist style in vogue during the early 16th century, wherein a vertical grille of perfectly straight gilt lines would be tooled on dark leather (frequently with a central plaquette). ¶ We find no auction records for the first edition. Among North American libraries, WorldCat reports copies only at Library of Congress, SMU, and Columbia.

CONDITION: Eighteenth-century quarter leather and striped boards, as described above; spine tooled in gold and with a paper title label. OCLC 80907772 reports a 1559 Cologne edition with 467 p., which otherwise appears unattested. We suspect the cataloger simply mistranscribed the date of the 1599 edition, the only Cologne edition USTC reports with 467 p. ¶ H2 and N1 stained; some scattered worming, only barely affecting some text, notably the upper left of the first half dozen leaves; printing defect on S4 (having been printed over a crease); a few small marginal paper tears and weaknesses; leaves V1 and V2 with some dampstaining in the lower margin, not affecting text. Paste-downs with some faint dampstaining at the edges, and with wormed losses filled; spine wormed, its head and tail restored; bit of worming in the lower right of the rear board; boards a bit soiled, faint dampstaining near the edges, and the corners bumped.

REFERENCES: USTC 842073; EDIT16 CNCE 32338 ¶ Shanti Graheli, "How to build a library across early modern Europe: The network of Claude Expilly," International Exchange in the Early Modern Book World (2016), p. 176n15 (cited above; "The universities of Pisa and Bologna were both extremely keen on having him to move from Padua; but these efforts had the sole result of increasing his pay at Padua."); Kenneth Pennington, "The jurisprudence of procedure," The History of Courts and Procedure in Medieval Canon Law (2016), p. 153 (along with Giuseppe Mascardi, Menochio was "particularly significant for the development of the jurisprudence of procedure...Their work was very influential in the late sixteenth and well into the seventeenth century"); Antonio Padoa-Schioppa (Caterina Fitzgerald, tr.), A History of Law in Europe (2007), p. 177-178 (cited above); Anthony Hobson, Renaissance book collecting (1999), p. 94 ("Fifteen books, mostly octavos, all but one from the Aldine Press, are decorated with a vertical grille of gilt lines"; see fig. 43); Anthony Hobson, Humanists and Bookbinders (1989), p. 121 and fig. 95 (on the same group of Aldines with gilt grilles); Breslauer, Catalogue 103, #41 (a 1533 Venetian quarto with a gilt grille); Bibliotheca Brookeriana Part VII (2025), #1846 (gilt grille on a 1544 Venetian imprint; "These grid patterns are perhaps best known from the library of Don Diego Hurtado de Mendoza")

Item #884