De claris legum interpretibus libri quatuor

Leipzig: Johann Friedrich Gleditsch, 1721. Quarto, full calf (rubbed), spine with raised bands, gilt-lettered contrasting title label, previous owner’s bookplate and inscriptions to endpapers, edges stained red, portrait frontispiece, pp. [xxxii]; 660; (20); ornamental headpiece, tailpiece and initials, top of leaves a2 and a3 remargined, overall very good.

Panciroli’s guide to legal practice based on biographical analysis of leading jurists in Roman times, to which are appended works by Joannis Fichardi (Vitae recentiorum jurisconsultorum); Marci Mantuae (Epitome virorumk illustrium); Joannis de Gazalupis (Historia interpretum et glossatorum juris); Catellani Cottae (Recensio brevis insignium juris interpretum et doctorum); Mathaei Gribaldi Mophae (Catalogus interpretum juris civilis) and Alberici Gentilis (De juris interpretibus dialogi sex).

Provenance :

Guido Kisch (1889-1985); Prague, Czechslovakia; c.1930-1980; bookplate to front endpaper and inscription to front free endpaper, with some earlier owner’s inscriptions.

Guido Kisch was a jurist, and a scholar and teacher of legal history. He received a post at the University of Leipzig in 1915, and, in 1920 was appointed Professor Ordinarius of History of Law and Political Theory at the University of Kaliningrad, (Königsberg), where he remained until 1922, when he accepted the same duties at the University of Halle, becoming Dean of the Law and Political Science faculty in 1925. In 1933 he was dismissed from his post by the Nazi government, and emigrated to the USA in 1935, where he settled in New York. For the next quarter of a century he lectured at universities both in the US and abroad, returning to Europe in 1962, settling in Basel, and teaching at its university. He published in excess of four hundred titles dealing with jurisprudence, humanism, history, and German-Jewish relations. He was a notable collector of early volumes relating to law.