Stunning first edition of this remarkable collection of revised Bavarian statutes, beautifully printed in red and black on very high quality vellum, richly bound in English morocco. Only one copy on vellum is recorded (Morgan) outside German libraries. Luxury editions on vellum of important books were produced in very small numbers to serve as presentation copies to the great and especially to patrons. Regarding this edition, it has been asserted that the type employed in the vellum copies differs throughout from that in the paper copies, in that the headings are all in red; in the paper copies they are said to be in black (Fairfax Murray).The Reformacion der Baÿrischen Lanndrecht constitutes a revised, codified and systematised new version of the Oberbayerische Landrecht , the Bavarian law code issued by Ludwig IV in 1346. The introduction specifies that the old law is provided with additions, explained and brought into better order. A document of great cultural significance, the volume covers the whole range of private law, including trials, crime, morality, blasphemy, marriage and inheritance, and commercial transactions. The century before the theological reformation of Luther was an era of intense legal reformation in Germany. In the early fifteenth century, German jurists began to call for a thoroughgoing reformation (reformatio) of the doctirines, structures and methods of private and criminal law. Beginning with Cologne in 1437, several German cities passed what they called legal reformations. They also included the new reformation laws of the principalities of Baden (1511), Franken (1512), Bavaria (1518). These local legal reformations aimed, in part, to routinize and reform the civil laws and procedures of these local polities. At minimum, they reduced a good deal of local customary law to writing, often thereby supplanting the ancient urban and territorial laws of the twelfth and thirteenth century (Witte). The fine vignette on the title page depicts the two brother Dukes, Wilhelm IV and Ludwig X of Bavaria, in full armour. Behind them, two tablets with the initials HW (Herzog Wilhelm) and HL (Herzog Ludwig). The woodcut, unsigned, was realised by Caspar Clofigl, an artist who worked at Munich about 1516-1529 as court painter to Duke Wilhelm. This volume was in the library of Hans Fürstenberg (1890-1982), a Franco-German banker and owner of one of the most significant private collections of precious early printed books, part of which he donated to important libraries, including the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. He is also the author of philosophical and historical writings.
