Handsome first edition of this work on expert or academic legal commentary (consilia) and judicial decisions by the little-known Paduan jurist Pace or Pax Scala (d. 1604), one of the few legal texts printed at the Aldine press. The book is set out as a series of quaestiones with responses by Scala, addressed to a fellow lawyer or patron called Bartolomeo Vitelli. The subject is the relationship of the written law to the legal opinions of jurists. The first book addresses the nature and status of consilia, as well as of jurists: can a Jewish convert, for example, become a jurist, since Jews could not? Scala is obviously interested in the relationship of Jewish citizens to the law courts, since he returns to it in the second book, which is an examination of different cases that might arise in the courts: Scala asks if Jews can bring suits against Christians, since Jews belong to a ‘different flock’. The third and fourth books discuss the relationship between learned consilia and judicial decisions, the most basic questions being whether, where, and when a judge should follow the letter of the law or the opinion given in a learned consilium. Situations discussed include when the judge disagrees with the consilia, when two different consilia disagree, and when the judge dies mid-case. There follows a brief work on how consilia relate to contracts and wills and testaments, and whether these should rely on consilia or the letter of the law in various situations, addressed to the Italian jurist Ottonelli Discaltio (1536-1607). This copy bears the signature of Johann Fischard, signing himself as utriusque juris doctor, i.e. doctor of both civil and canon law. The date on our signature unfortunately rules out the famous German satirist Johann Fischart (c.1545-91), who was indeed a doctor of both laws; there is an example from 1580 of him signing himself as ‘v.j.d.’ (i.e. utriusque juris doctor), but in a slightly different hand and spelling his name Fischart. However, no one could be expected to have obtained their doctorate in both laws by the age of fifteen, which is roughly when students began their undergraduate degrees, and Fischart most likely did not gain his until the 1570s. Either the consensus on Fischart’s birth date is well off, therefore, or, more probably, this signature is that of another German doctor of both laws, born slightly earlier and with the very similar name of Fischard. A possible candidate is the Johann Fischard who was a pupil at the school in Frankfurt run by Jakob Mycillus, a former student of Melanchthon, and who contributed to a 1528 compendium of humanist Latin poetry and translations by Melanchthon’s circle (see Nathaniel Hess, ‘Angelo Poliziano and the Renaissance Invention of Greek-to-Latin Verse Translation’ PhD thesis, University of Cambridge (2022), p. 101). ‘Volume devenu rare et peu d’usage’ (Renouard).
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