AN EARLY VOLUME OF LAW CASES

Turnbull Library Record, Volume VII, 1 June 1947, Page 18

AN EARLY VOLUME OF LAW CASES

Last year a sturdy little quarto volume bound in stamped parchment was presented to the library. Its title is De Actionibus, and it was printed at Lyons in 1539. The author’s name, Jason Maino, is clearly shown on the black and red title page. It was not easy to find much about either the volume or its author, but the British Museum kindly supplied information on the former, the ‘ Biographie Universelle ’on the latter. No copy of this edition appears to be in their collections or in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. The binding, which has been thought interesting enough to reproduce, is a superior type of trade binding common in Germany in the sixteenth century. The initials on either side of the stamped head of Lucretia on the upper cover are apparently those of the original binder or bookseller. Haebler, the eminent German bibliographer, considered this design was used at Wittemberg, where the volume was therefore probably bound. The initials could be those of either Christoph Georg or Caspar Genseler, both active in the book-trade there at the time.

Jason May no was an eminent jurisconsult of Pavia of the fifteenth century: and as Pavia was one of the great centres of learning of the age, we may assume that Mayno (or Maino) was a considerable figure in his world. Certain it

is that his works were authorities for the following century, no less certain that he has faded into the dimness common to much of the culture of the later middle ages. Mayno achieved a high reputation as an advocate and orator, and was made a Count Palatine by the Emperor Maximilian. Louis XII of France gave him the Chateau of Piopera, and certain honours. He is notable in that he systematized clearly the opinions of commentators in jurisprudence, and also improved the recognition and reimbursement of lawyers and law teachers. He wrote several books, of which De Actionibus, first issued in 1483, was the earliest, and in itself a notable contribution to Roman law in its orderly methodising of the state of mediaeval knowledge on the subject. It was reprinted many times within the following century.

It was indicated on another page that there was a link between Alciati and Jason Mayno. As both were legal scholars of Pavia in the early sixteenth century, it is readily understandable that one of the earliest emblems of the former should have been devised for the latter. The symbols represented Hermes, a favourite figure with the emblematists, and were used with the motto Virtuti fortuna comes. Alciati’s tomb was sculptured with the same symbols, with the horns of plenty and the twined serpents.