VERY SCARCE POST-INCUNABULUM OF ANDREA'S «SUMMA BREVIS» ON MEDIEVAL MARRIAGE LAWS
ONLY A COPY IN USA

D'Andrea, Giovanni.Summa Johannis Andree sup[er] quarto Decretaliu[m]: que etsi breuis est verbis vtilitate t[ame]n longa satis quare alijs summis p[ro]lixioribus iure venit ista [et] comoditate antepone[n]da quod ex lectoris bene intellige[n]tis iudicio co[m]mitte[n]dum relinquitur.[Nuremberg: Impressa p[er] Hieronymum Holtzel ciuem Nuremberge[n]sem, anno 1507 xv. die May.]

4to, stiff paperboards from a 18th century musical sheet in red and black, ff. [9].Text in latin, gothic type.

Very scarce early edition a founding text of medieval marriage law: the «summa» by Giovanni D'Andrea, the standard handbook on this topic for more than two centuries.

The work is a digest of the Medieval laws on marriage as described in the fourth book of Gregory IX’s Decretals, a book entirely devoted to marriage law: the first printed edition of this work was published (twice) in Rome: about 1473 by Adam Rot (GW 1742) and about 1473-74 by Johannes Gensberg (GW 1743). The Summa had nineteen editions in the 15th century (all extremely rare).

Giovanni D'Andrea or Johannes Andreae, (c. 1270/1275–1348) was an Italian expert in canon law, the most renowned and successful canonist of the later Middle Ages. His contemporaries referred to him as iuris canonici fons et tuba («the fount and trumpet of canon law»). Most important among his works were extensive commentaries on all of the official collections of papal decretals, papal judgments in the form of letters to delegated judges that were at the core of canon law.

He was born near Florence, and studied Roman law and canon law at the University of Bologna, the most important law school of the age, where he distinguished himself in this subject to such an extent that he was made professor at Padua, and then at Pisa before returning to Bologna, where he remained until his death. He wrote the statutes by which the University was governed.

Among his other works, a gloss called Novella sive commentarius in decretales epistolas Gregorii IX on the Liber Extra (1234), compiled under the direction of Pope Gregory IX; the glosses on the Constitutiones Clementinae (1317) which became the standard gloss for this text; a commentary called the Mercuriales on the Regula iuris in the Liber Sextus (1298) of Boniface VIII; and another work on marriage, De Sponsalibus et Matrimonio, derived from the work of Giovanni Anguissola.

He is reported to have died in Bologna of the Black Death in 1348, and an epitaph in the church of the Dominicans in which he was buried, calling him Rabbi Doctorum, Lux, Censor, Normaque Morum testifies to the public estimation of his character.

References: OCLC 630832136 locates only a copy in US libraries, at University of Kansas Archives (Kenneth Spencer Research Library: the copy belonged to Isaac Newton).

A fine copy.