Printing R-Evolution and Society 1450-1500 Fifty Years that Changed Europe edited by Cristina Dondi chapter 4 Printing the Law in the 15th Century With a Focus on Corpus iuris civilis and the Works of Bartolus de Saxoferrato Maria Alessandra Panzanelli Fratoni 15cBOOKTRADE, University of Oxford, UK Abstract The editions of legal texts are a major and important part of 15th-century book output, amounting to about 15% of the surviving extant editions. The category comprehends two types of work: (a) the collections of Roman and Canon law, with their medieval supplements and commentaries; (b) acts and regulations produced by govern- ments and by local authorities as part of their day-to-day activity. After a general overview, this article focuses on the first group of texts, which offers an opportunity to address some key questions related to the impact of printing in a particular cultural context, that of the university. A study of legal texts printed in the 15th century aims to provide a relevant contribution to a better understanding of the impact of printing by comparing elements of continuity and discontinuity with the manuscript and later printed tradition. Keywords History of the book. Textual transmission. Incunabula. Scholarly book. Law books. Legal texts. Ius commune. Legal history. Corpus iuris civilis. Bartolus de Saxofer- rato. History of Universities. Summary 1 Introduction. – 2 Legal Texts in the Age of Print: An Overview. – 2.1 The Cat- egories of Law; Ius Commune and Iura Propria; Scholarly Production and Current Affairs – 2.2 Civil and Canon law: Scholarly Production. – 2.3 Periodisation of the Texts of Civil and Canon law. – 2.4 Commentaries, Treatises and Reference Works: The Most Published Genres of Scholarly Production. – 3 Editions of the Corpus iuris civilis (Focus 1). –3.1 Intro- duction. – 3.2 The editiones principes of the Books of Civil law. – 3.3 From Occasional In- itiatives Towards the Corpus iuris civilis: Key-players, Entrepreneurship and Innovation. – 4 Editions of the Works of Bartolus de Saxoferrato (focus 2). – 4.1 A General Overview. – 4.2 The Lectura of the Tres libri: Early Editions and New Evidence from a Manuscript 120. – 4.3 The Editions of Consilia, Quaestiones and Tractatus. – 5 Conclusions. Studi di storia 13 e-ISSN 2610-9433 | ISSN 2610-8879 ISBN [ebook] 978-88-6969-332-8 | ISBN [print] 978-88-6969-333-5 Edizioni Ca’Foscari Peer review | Open access 67 Submitted 2019-05-06 | Accepted 2019-11-05 | Published 2020-02-24 © 2020 | cb Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License DOI 10.30687/978-88-6969-332-8/004 Maria Alessandra Panzanelli Fratoni Printing the Law in the 15th Century Per sapere che non si può fare storia della cultura, né pertanto della letteratura italiana dal Tre al Cinquecento, senza fare i conti con Bartolo, non occorre che lo studioso si rassegni a riesumare un paio di libri […] basta che adoperi i ferri propri del suo mestiere, che faccia storia delle università e biblioteche di quei secoli, storia della stampa, storia dei testi.1 (Dionisotti, Filologia umanistica e testi giuridici, 1971) 1 Introduction The editions of legal texts are a very important part of 15th-century book production; the category is second only to Theology. With about 4,500 editions, it represents 15% of known surviving output [fig. 8].2 Two main groups of texts form the category: a. the compilations of Civil and Canon law with their medieval supplements and the exegetical works of the jurists: (1) the Corpus iuris civilis, the Justinian compilation (Roman law), the law of the Empire; (2) the Corpus iuris canonici, the law of the Church; (3) commentaries, treatises, and works written by the jurists for teaching purposes or in the course of their profes- sional activity, such as consilia (the texts of the ius commune).3 b. Collections of local rules, such as statutes, regulations, cus- toms (the texts of the iura propria) but also the acts promul- gated by the superior authorities as part of their daily activity. The numerous papal bulls issued for the granting of indul- 2 An explanation of the figures is found in paragraph 2.1. General note: editions are quoted with reference to the Gesamtkatalog der Wiegenducke (GW) and the Incunab- ula Short-Title Catalogue (ISTC); descriptions are based on the latter. For detailed de- scriptions of texts, the reader is invited to check the TEXT-inc database, which is be- ing implemented with new descriptions every day and where most part of the editions discussed in this paper have already been recorded. In TEXT-inc the records are iden- tified with a number made of a ‘t’ followed by the ISTC number. A final note on the for- mat: in this paper the format has been specified only in relation to texts not in folio, which is the usual format for law books. Actually, as Paul Needham has shown, for le- gal texts a particular format was developed, resulting from the use of a sheet of paper of special size, named by him “super-royal”. To determine the category and format of 15th century paper, a very helpful tool has been developed: the Needham Calculator (www.needhamcalculator.net/). It will be used in a future research on legal texts for a systematic recording of this datum which has not been possible to include in the pre- sent research. I should also like to add that the 15cBOOKTRADE has produced a spe- cial ruler, on which the categories of paper classified by Needham have been marked so as to simplify their recording. 3 The ius commune is “the complex of normative authorities and doctrinal interpreta- tions produced by jurists from the 12th to the 15th century”: Conte, “Consuetudine, Cou- tume, Gewohnheit and Ius Commune”, 233 (“Abstract”); García y García, “The Faculties of Law”, 393: “These legal texts and their commentaries are known as Roman-Canon law (ius commune), a name signifying that this code of laws was in principle considered to be valid throughout the whole of medieval Christendom, although co-existing with many statutes and other local regulations forming exceptions from it”. Cf. also: Bellomo, The Common Legal Past of Europe; Padoa Schioppa, A History of Law in Europe, 71-228. Studi di storia 13 68 Printing R-Evolution and Society 1450-1500, 67-198 Maria Alessandra Panzanelli Fratoni Printing the Law in the 15th Century gences are found in this group, making Canon law the larg- est group of contemporary texts, as well as among the earli- est kind of texts, to appear in print.4 This essay focuses on the first group of texts, whose production, dis- tribution and transmission were characterised by a direct and strong link with the social, intellectual and cultural environment of the uni- versities.5 The rediscovery and arrangement of the texts of the law were at the very origin of the university as an institution: “We all know that the teaching of the law was not only the earliest one; it was also the first one to be raised to the level of a university school, dur- ing the phase of renewal of the texts and practice”.6 As is well known, within the universities an efficient book-production system was put in place: the famous pecia system. The production and distribution of the texts necessary to students and scholars of the law (as well as of medicine, philosophy and theology) was granted by the stationarii, officials in charge of the distribution to scribes of the ‘exemplars’, that is texts previously checked and officially approved. Since the system was first described,7 an extensive bibliography has been pro- 4 Two bulls and two indulgences were printed in Mainz by 1460, all related to the war against the Turks: Calixtus III, Pont. Max. (formerly Alonso de Borgia), Bulla Turcorum. [Mainz: Type of the 36-line Bible, about 1456]. 4°. GW 0591610N; ISTC ic00060000; Ca- lixtus III, Pont. Max. (formerly Alonso de Borgia), Bulla Turcorum [German] Die Bulla widder die Turcken. (Tr: Heinrich Kalteisen), [Mainz: Type of the 36-line Bible, after 29 June 1456]. 4°. GW 5916; ISTC ic00060100; Chappe, Paulinus, commissary, Indulgentia, 1454. For contributions to the war against the Turks, [Mainz: Printer of the 42-line Bi- ble (Johann Gutenberg), 1454-55]. Bdsde. GW 6555; ISTC ic00422400; Chappe, Pauli- nus, commissary, Indulgentia, 1454-55. For contributions to the war against the Turks, [Mainz: Printer of the 31-line indulgence and of the 36-line Bible, 1454-55]. Bdsde fo- lio. GW 6556; ISTC ic00422600. 5 Cf. Dauchy et al., The Formation and Transmission of Western Legal Culture, 1-19. 6 Dolcini, “Le prime università”, 12 (orig.: “Tutti sappiamo che l’insegnamento giu- ridico fu non solo il più antico ma altresì quello che nella fase del suo rinnovamen- to testuale e pratico fu per la prima volta sollevato al rango di scuola universitaria”); García y García, “The Faculty of Law”, 388: “The University of Bologna is first heard of at the end of the eleventh century [...]. Its Faculty of law, the first in Europe, was to be the prototype and model of all others until the end of the old regime”; Padoa Schi- oppa, A History of Law in Europe, 71: “between the eleventh and twelfth centuries […] an astounding series of innovations were to take place […] the emergence of a legal science, through the founding of an institution, the university, devoted specifically to the training of lawyers”, just to provide a few bibliographical references on the early universities in relation to the teaching of the law, on which theme Manlio Bellomo de- serves a particular mention: Bellomo, Saggio sull’Università nell’età del diritto comu- ne; Bellomo, Scholae, Universitates, Studia.