Martini ab Azpilcueta - Consiliorum sive Responsorum [1 Edizione] - 1590

Consilia or Responsa of Martin de Azpilcueta, Doctor Navarre. Part Two.
Rome, from the Typographia of Iacobus Tornerius, (1590).

Original Roman edition of the second part of the great collection of consilia (legal opinions and responses) by Martín de Azpilcueta (Barásoain 1492 – Rome 1586), universally known as Doctor Navarrus.

Bibliographic description
• Format: small quarto (23 × 17 cm when bound).
• Pages: 832, (92).
• Contemporary half-bound in limp parchment “à la romana,” with a manuscript title on the spine ("Consiliorum Navarri") and at the head cut (“CONS. NAVAR. PAR. 2”), signs of wear and tiny worm holes (traverses) without relevant text damage.
• Frontispiece with the large typographic mark of the Society of Jesus (IHS within a radiant oval); colophon and type register present.
• Text in Latin, with internal book frontispieces, tables of contents, ornate initials and rich indexes (Index Rerum ac Verborum).

Contents
The work collects hundreds of consilia organized according to the order of the five books of the Decretals. This Part Two includes, among others:
• Book Four: De Sponsalibus
• Book Five: De Accusationibus et Inquisitionibus, De Simonia, De Furtis, De Praebendis, etc.
They are concrete opinions on matters of canon law, matrimonial law, ecclesiastical criminal law, benefices, simony, thefts, prebends, and ecclesiastical forum topics, with continual references to Roman law and the decisions of the Council of Trent. The work closes with a large Index Rerum ac Verborum and the typographic register.

Importance and rarity
Martín de Azpilcueta was one of the foremost authorities of the Salamanca School, a canonist, moral theologian, and pioneer of modern economic thought (he is regarded as the first formulator of the quantity theory of money). Consultor to the Apostolic Penitentiary and highly esteemed by Pius V, Gregory XIII, and Sixtus V, his Consilia represent one of the most authoritative and consulted collections of canon jurisprudence of the late sixteenth century.

This Roman edition of 1590, printed by Iacobus Tornerius a few years after the author’s death, is one of the earliest and purest posthumous issues.

Copies in contemporary bindings and in good state of preservation (as the present one, with only minimal worm-eaten marks) are rather rare on the antiquarian market and sought after both by collectors of canon law and the history of the Salamanca School, as well as by libraries specializing in sixteenth-century jurisprudence and Navarrese-Spanish culture.

Excellent copy of one of the foundational texts of Renaissance canon law, of great historic-legal and collectible interest.