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Description and Holding Information
Oldradus, Concilia, 1499
Consilia Oldradi: by Oldradus de Ponte (alt. de Laude), unpaginated (to increase usability and cite-ability, LLMC has added 262 pages of overlay
pagination), Venice, Bernardion Stagnino, 1499. With GWU’s kind permission, we are pleased to enrich the description of this title with an article
reprinted from A Legal Miscellanea; The Newsletter of the Friends of the Jacob Burns Law Library entitled: “Special Collection Focus; Consilia Oldradi
(1499)”: by Kasia Solon, GWU-Law Library Rare Books Librarian, Vol. 6, No.2, Autumn, 2009. “Must Saracens pay tithes? Must the Holy Roman Emperor extend
due process of law to a papal vassal? These and an array of other questions are the subjects of the Law Library’s recent acquisition, Consilia
Oldradi, the consilia of Italian lay canonist Oldradus de Ponte (variously Oldrado da Ponte or de Laude). As one would conclude from the queries above,
Oldradus lived during the Middle Ages, and the last was heard of him in 1337. Petrarch proclaimed him the most illustrious jurist of the age Oldradus was
one of the first to write, collect, and publish a large number of consilia and quaestiones. Consilia belong to a category of medieval documents akin
to the lawyer’s brief that originated in the early thirteenth century, and were written at the behest of either litigants or judges. They are
distinguished from quaestiones, which originated as a twelfth-century academic exercise in which an issue would be presented to which jurists proposed
solutions. Oldradus’s contributions to the consilia genre were significant: he was one of the first jurists to compose consilia which treated real-life legal
issues. In Oldradus’s era, consilia and quaestiones had yet to separate and the two genres at times resembled each other closely. Consilia gained
importance in the fourteenth century as judges and litigants, as part of the legal process, turned to jurists for legal opinions. In time consilia claimed
standing as a significant legal genre of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Jurists received generous remuneration for drafting consilia.
Oldradus was born at Lodi (hence “de Laude”) and studied law at Bologna. He worked for a time for a cardinal of the powerful Colonna family, and also
taught law at the University of Padua. Around 1311 he moved to Avignon to serve the papal court’s judicial branch, the Rota, as an auditor and judge.
Possibly he also taught in the law school at Avignon. It is through his consilia, however, that Oldradus made a lasting contribution to the law. Oldradus
authored consilia on a number of important political issues which were cited for centuries by later jurists. The Law Library’s copy of Consilia
Oldradi, with its 1499 printing date, qualifies as an incunabulum. The anglicized term “incunable” as generally understood refers to a book printed in
Europe between Gutenberg’s introduction of movable metal type in the mid-fifteenth century and before 1501. (Fittingly, the meaning of ‘incunabulum’
derives from the Latin for “swaddling clothes.”) Incunabula are consequential for insights they provide into the birth of printing. While our 1499 printing
embraces a recent innovation, the title page, unlike most title pages of today this one consists of only a single line: the title. The printer’s
information still is found at the conclusion of the text in the colophon—a signal that conventions from the time of manuscripts still held sway even toward
the close of the incunable era. An incunable’s contents may also provide insight into the transition to printing. This 1499 work appears to be the
seventh printing of Oldradus’s consilia. When first collected in manuscript, his consilia numbered 264. By the end of the manuscript era, that number
had increased to 274; the third printed edition established a new normal of 333. It is unclear whether these additional consilia were authored by
Oldradus. If not, these accretions may be evidence of the practices of early printers to “flesh out” their own version, or of the difficulties of verifying
authorship in an earlier age. Indeed, scholars have yet to determine with precision how many consilia Oldradus wrote. Despite its popularity over
the centuries, the consilia genre was not without its critics. Consilia could be peppered with myriad citations and each pronouncement commonly was
chaperoned by a surfeit of supporting authorities. (In this regard, the criticism of consilia resembles that of the modern-day law review article.) In
defense of the consilia, jurists wrote with the knowledge (or assumption) that their audience had a well-stocked library at the ready in which to hunt
down their references. The Consilia Oldradi of 1499 is one of only three recorded copies worldwide, two of which are in the United States. Sources:
Kenneth Pennington, Oldradus de Ponte, at: Brendan McManus, Oldradus de Ponte (de
Laude), at: http://faculty.bemidjistate.edu/bmcmanus/Research/olddp.html/ [Note: The entire backfile of GWU’s fascinating Legal Miscellanea can be
found at:
Title:   Consilia Oldradi.
OCLC Number:   776912479
Available Volumes
NameFiche CountOnlinePaper Backup
Volume 1YesNo