Molfetta - Consuetudines Neapolitanas - 1673

The Neapolitan Living Law in the Baroque Age
Valuable testimony of the southern legal tradition, Andrea da Molfetta's Commentaria ad consuetudines Neapolitanas represents one of the most extensive and systematic presentations of the customary law of the Kingdom of Naples in the early decades of the seventeenth century. Organized by questions, the work addresses practical cases and theoretical principles of civil and feudal law, translating the daily experience of Neapolitan courts into the baroque doctrinal form. Lazzaro Scoriggio's printing house produced a monumental edition, characterized by a clear two-column layout and a rich array of woodcut initials.
Market value
Complete copies of this 1613 Neapolitan edition are very rare on the market. The documented copies range between 700 and 1,200 euros, with higher values for copies in intact contemporary binding or with documented legal provenance. Volumes with defects or abrasions to the parchment are priced around 500 euros.

Physical description and condition
Contemporary binding in full rigid parchment with passing nerves, handwritten title on the spine, missing parts and signs of wear. Printed title page in red and black with a figurative printer's mark; text in two columns, decorated woodcut initials. Pages with some halos and marginal stains. As with many ancient books, with a multi-century history, some imperfections are present that are not always noted in the description. Pp. (4); 14nn; 540; 66; (2); 60nn; (4).

Full title and author
Commentary on the Neapolitan customs, organized by questions.
Naples, from Typographia Lazzari Scoriggii, 1613.
Andrea from Molfetta.

Context and Significance
This work represents one of the most detailed commentaries on the Customs of the Kingdom of Naples, a body of local laws that, until Bourbon reforms, constituted the actual foundation of southern justice. Andrea da Molfetta, a regular jurist and consultant in ecclesiastical and civil cases, organizes his work in the form of questions, each dedicated to a controversial point of legal practice: successions, feudal rights, ecclesiastical privileges, sales, and mixed jurisdictions. The structure reflects the vibrancy of the Neapolitan school, where daily case law was elevated to a doctrinal system. The print, elegant and functional, demonstrates the full maturity of early seventeenth-century Neapolitan typography.

Short biography of the author
Andrea da Molfetta (active between the late 16th and early 17th centuries) was a jurist, theologian, and member of the Regular Clerics. Trained in Naples and Rome, his education combined canon and civil law, following the Neapolitan tradition of commentary and practice. His main work, the Commentaria ad consuetudines Neapolitanas, earned him widespread recognition among scholars of customary law and remained throughout the 17th century a reference text for the judicial administration of the Kingdom.

Printing history and circulation
Lazzaro Scoriggio (active around 1608 to 1630) was one of the most important Neapolitan typographers of the early seventeenth century, known for the quality of his legal, theological, and philosophical editions. His workshop — one of the most esteemed in the city — was distinguished by the use of sharp characters, decorative frontispieces, and titles in red and black, just like in your volume.

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND REFERENCES
EDIT16, CNCE 22453
ICCU, SBN: IT\\ICCU\\TO0E\\008866.
López, Stampa and the Right in Naples in the Seventeenth Century, Naples, 1989.
Capasso, Neapolitan bibliography, II, p. 412.
Ricci, Neapolitan typographers of the Seventeenth Century, p. 97.