Comenza la tauola de li statuti de uenesia.
Venice, Filippo di Pietro 1477.
Folio (283 x 199.). [xiv], [160]p. Roman type, initial guide letters, text opening with four lines printed in red.
CONTEMPORARY WOODEN BOARDS backed with more recent leather, no endleaves, spine lined with a fragment of a 14th-century vellum manuscript, evidence of clasp and catch.
FIRST EDITION OF THE LAWS GOVERNING VENICE AND ITS EMPIRE. Not dependent on Roman precedents, these laws set the civil and criminal procedures of Europe’s longest lived overseas empire — the island republic, its mainland holdings immediately to the west and its colonial possessions: the stato da mar.
Reflecting the preeminently commercial character of the Venetian state, the majority of these statutes concern real and moveable property, contracts, pledges, debts, loans, inheritance, interest obligations, counterfeit merchandise and trading partnerships. The nearly complete overlap in the 15th century of private Venetian seagoing business ventures and state military operations means THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN FIGURE PROMINENTLY IN THE CODE, as their male family members were long abroad. Multiple and complex jurisdictions and appellate avenues developed in response to the variety of local statutes, customary laws, special privileges and feudal jurisdictions of the maritime and mainland states. “The judicial system played a significant role in tying the disparate parts of the maritime state together” (O’Connell).
THE VENETIAN MARITIME CODE CONCERNS COMMERCIAL PROJECTS AND MILITARY EXPEDITIONS. These fifty-two articles, and their nine supplementary “corrections”, deal with towing disabled vessels, cargo, luggage allowance, victualing, entering and leaving port, arming sailors, damage liability, manifests, transport of pilgrims and cavalry, deserters, daily rations of water and wine, Black Sea voyages, and so on. According to Cicogna, these statutes were not reprinted.
THIS FOLIO IS THE FIRST NON-LITERARY WORK TO BE PRINTED IN THE VENETIAN DIALECT and the fifth overall. In good condition (pale stains, worm holes, seventeen leaves with neatly repaired worm trail not affecting legibility), contemporary manuscript headlines and foliation.
¶O’Connell, Men of Empire: Power and Negotiation in Venice's Maritime State 75, 78, 80-1, 84-90 & 96; Cicogna, Saggio di bibliografia veneziana 1206 “Prima e rara edizione”, 1241 (criminal code) & 1263 (maritime code); Doumerc, “An Exemplary Maritime Republic: Venice at the End of the Middle Ages” in War at Sea in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance edd. Hattendorf & Unger 151-65; Bibliografia delle edizioni giuridiche antiche in lingua italiana I: 5; Manzoni, Bibliografia degli statuti…dei municipii italiani I: 529-30; IGI 10143; Gamba, Serie degli scritti impressi in dialetto veneziano ed. Vianello 45,4; ISTC is00724000; Goff S-724.
Price: $62,000.00