COVARRUBIAS Y LEYVA, Diego de.

Five separately published treatises, as listed below, bound together in one volume.

Salamanca, 1554–73. Folio (265 x 195 mm); a few early manuscript annotations; occasional stains andsoiling; contemporary limp vellum, worn and soiled. Sub Philippo secundo Hispaniarum rege. Didaci Covarruvias Toletani . . . in Gregorii Noni titulum de testamentis commentarii. Ex quarta auctoris recognitione. Salamanca, Alejandro de Cánova, 1573 (colophon: 1572). Ff. [4], 174, [7], [1, blank]. Ruiz Fidalgo 828.Relectio, cap. quanvis pactum, de pactis, libro sexto. Salamanca, Andrea de Portonariis, 1557. Ff. [6], 128. Ruiz Fidalgo 482.Regulae, peccatum. de regulis iuris lib. 6. relectio: autore Didaco Covarruvias à Leyva Toletano . . . Ex secunda authoris recognitione aucta & locupletata. Salamanca, Andrea de Portonariis, 1558. Ff. [6], 97, [1, recto blank, printer’s device on verso]. Ruiz Fidalgo 508.Relectio, regulae, possessor malæ fidei. De regulis iuris, libr. 6. Salamanca, Andrea de Portonariis, 1557. Ff. [8], 101, [1, recto blank, printer’s device on verso]. Ruiz Fidalgo 484.In Bonifacii Octavi constitutionem ultimam, quæ incipit, Alma mater . . . commentarii. Salamanca, Andrea de Portonariis, 1554. Ff. [7], [1, blank], 138, [1], [1, blank]. Ruiz Fidalgo 405.Born at Toledo in 1512, Covarrubias, professor of canon law at Salamanca, was ‘the foremost Spanish jurist of the sixteenth century’ (Fernández-Santamaria) and represented the Emperor Charles V at the Council of Trent and served on the councils of Castile and state under Philip II. His reputation went beyond Spain and endured for many years after his death (1577) – he was, for example, frequently cited by Grotius. ‘Such was the recognized eminence of his legal science that he was styled the Bartholo of Spain. His vast legal learning was always set forth with a peculiar beauty of diction and lucidity of style. His genius was universal, and embraced all the sciences subsidiary to, and illustrative of, the science of law’ (CE IV p. 457).In 1548 Covarrubias lectured on the Indian question and was appointed one of the official examiners of Sepúlveda’s treatise, Democrates alter, which justified the subjugation of the American Indians largely in terms of Aristotle’s theory of natural slavery; he shared the commission’s general mood, respectful of Sepúlveda’s scholarship but finding his stance on Aristotle inadmissable. In this context the treatise of greatest interest in this volume is the Regulae, peccatum. de regulis iuris lib. 6. relectio, in which Covarrubias discusses in general terms the concept of a just war. In essence he rejects the notion that slavery is of natural law and holds, as Justinian and others had, that men are born naturally free, but, as human malice grew, it became necessary to safe-guard by force the commonwealth against those who would destroy it. Civil slavery came into being to punish these malefactors, and it is, therefore, human and international law that permits the enslavement of those captured in a just war. Covarrubias denies the Emperor’s claim to lordship of the world and states that war cannot be legitimately waged, merely on the basis of their infidelity, against non-Christians who occupy lands that had never been part of a Christian ruler’s jurisdiction. When applied to the Americas, such arguments, shared with other jurists in Spain at the time, questioned the very foundations of Spanish rule in the New World: as the Emperor had no valid jurisdiction there, war against the Indians could not be justified on the grounds that they were rebels, all other reasons for the Spanish warlike presence in the New World had slight if any justice, while its inhabitants could not be deprived of their liberty and property by appeal to natural law (see Fernández-Santamaria, The state, war and peace: Spanish political thought in the Renaissance pp. 87–96).

• GBP 3,750.00 > Andere Währungen
• Bestellnummer: T2129

• Antiquariat: Bernard Quaritch Ltd. (GREAT BRITAIN)