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

Consiliorum sive Responsorum of Martin de Azpilcueta Doctor Navarrus. 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 answers) by Martín de Azpilcueta (Barásoain 1492 – Rome 1586), universally known as Doctor Navarrus.

Bibliographic description
• Format: in-4° (23 × 17 cm at binding).
• Pages: 832, (92).
• Contemporary parchment limp binding “à la romana,” with manuscript title on the back (“Consiliorum Navarri”) and on the head edge (“CONS. NAVAR. PAR. 2”), signs of use and minimal wormholes (crawlings) with no significant damage to the text.
• Frontispiece with large typographic mark of the Society of Jesus (IHS within a radiant oval); colophon and typographic register present.
• Text in Latin, with internal frontispieces of the book, tables of contents, ornate initials and rich indices (Index Rerum ac Verborum).

Content
The work gathers hundreds of consilia organized according to the order of the five books of the Decretals. The present Part Two comprises, among others:
• Book IV: De Sponsalibus
• Book V: De Accusationibus et Inquisitionibus, De Simonia, De Furtis, De Praebendis, etc.
These are concrete opinions on questions of canon law, matrimonial law, ecclesiastical criminal law, benefices, simony, thefts, prebends, and matters of ecclesiastical court, 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 leading authorities of the School of Salamanca, a canonist, moral theologian and pioneer of modern economic thought (he is considered 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 canonical 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 most faithful posthumous editions.

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

Excellent copy of one of the fundamental texts of Renaissance canonical jurisprudence, of great historical-legal and collecting interest.