Two leaves with legal treatises, including De carceribus (concerning prisons), in Latin, manuscript on paper [Italy, first half of the fifteenth century]

Two leaves, both with double column of 39 lines of a small and cramped late gothic Italian secretarial hand, spaces left for initials, a few notes in margins (one of these showing that text was written and glossed before bifolium was folded and bound), the second leaf with a watermark of a hunting horn similar to Briquet 7682-88 (mostly recorded in northern Italy from 1413 through the 1420s), small scuffs, stains and modern paper repairs to edges of second leaf, overall fair and legible condition, each leaf approximately 305 by 213mm.

De carceribus is a fourteenth-century legal study of one of the rarest aspects of medieval law: prisons and imprisonment. It draws much of its source material from Classical sources and legal codes, but has practical applications, seeking to establish under what conditions a judge might imprison a criminal. Its authorship is uncertain and unlikely to be resolved. In the sixteenth century, the jurist Mariano Sozzini attributed it to Baldus de Ubaldis (1327-1400), and was supported in that by a sixteenth-century printing of the text and modern studies as recent as 1968 (T. Diplovatazio, 'De claris iuris consultis. Pars posterior', Studia Gratiana, X, 1968, p. 298). Baldus was a student of Bartolus de Saxoferrato at Perugia, who in turn taught widely across Italy and was the tutor of Pierre Roger de Beaufort (later Gregory XI). However, it has also be attributed to other authorities such as Matteo Mattesillani, Angelo de 'Perigli, Pietro d'Ancarano and to a mysterious filius domini Baldi.