LOYSEL (Antoine) - Lot 533

LOYSEL (Antoine) La Guyenne de Antoine Loisel, qui sont huict remonstrances faictes en la chambre de justice de Guyenne sur le subject des édits de pacification, plus une remonstrance sur la réduction de la ville & rétablissement du Parlement de Paris. Paris, L'Angelier, 1605. In-8: 8f.,377f., (3). Pagination errors. Handwritten bookplate to L'église de Paris on title page. Old soft vellum covers, handwritten title on spine. A work dealing with the edicts of pacification putting an end to the Wars of Religion. Antoine Loysel (1536-1617), seigneur de Courroy, de Fouilloy and de l'Églantier, was a jurisconsult who has remained famous among jurists for his collection of the general principles of ancient French common law. Loysel was a follower of Mos Gallicus, the humanist method, but practice distanced him from the study of Roman law and history. Politically, he was a defender of the king and the king's powers, and believed that the law should be that of the kingdom. It took Loysel forty years to compile the 958 maxims in his collection, which expresses French law in elegant form. In this way, he laid the foundations of French law by fusing the rules of numerous customs and elements of Roman law. He was one of the most distinguished magistrates of his time, and was appointed avocat du Roy in the Guyenne chamber of justice by Henry III. He left numerous works. His speeches, packed with Greek and Latin quotations, are a curious sample of the eloquence of the time.