MARTIAL D'AUVERGNE. - Lot 46

MARTIAL D'AUVERGNE. LIII arrest d'amours. Rouen: Raphaël Du Petit Val, 1587. -In-16, 117x79: 899 pp, (30 ff. last blank). Soft parchment overlay, smooth spine (contemporary binding). New edition of this famous 16th-century text, a true bestseller that went through no fewer than 31 editions between 1500 and 1597. It includes a fine woodcut frame on the title. The work was written by Martial d'Auvergne (1430-1508), prosecutor at the Paris parliament and notary at the Châtelet. "The work takes the form of a collection of parliamentary rulings inspired by those that legal practitioners might compile in the course of their duties. A prologue and epilogue in verse written in the first person frame the fifty-one judgments and introduce a framework narrative. The narrator explains that he attended a session of a high court of justice, the Parlement d'Amours, and has transcribed word for word the judgments as he heard them pronounced by the President that day. Imitating the procès-verbaux that summarized the stages of the proceedings up to the final verdict, the writing of the rulings respects the structure and stereotyped formulas in force at the time. However, Martial d'Auvergne produced a daring and colorful early work, in which legal form is used in the service of a fictitious and parodic subject. The rulings in question were handed down by the Parliament of the god Amour, and are intended to resolve disputes between competing lovers, between spurned lovers and their ladies, or between neighbors who spy on each other's love affairs. The collection is composed of autonomous arrêts functioning as short prose stories [...] of variable length, from half a page to ten pages" (Hélène Lannier, Stratégies éditoriales dans les éditions des Arrêts d'Amours de Martial d'Auvergne publiées au XVIe siècle: quand l'imprimeur-libraire choisit son public, Université Lumière-Lyon 2, 2019, pp. 163-164). Martial d'Auvergne's "arrêts d'amours" number 51. They are followed by Arrêt 52 and Ordonnances sur le fait des masques, both composed by Gilles d'Aurigny dit le Pamphile (14..-1553), which first appeared alone in 1528 in Paris with Cheradame. At the end, after the table, the fifty-third ruling "donné sur le reiglement des arrierages requis par les femmes à l'encontre de leurs Maris" has been added. The comments are by Benoît Le Court (14..-1559). Copy in contemporary binding. The binding is partly unbound, and the seams on the hinge of the first cover have come loose. Binding missing. A few stains and wormholes. Restored tears on second leaf. Missing tear at the bottom of leaf HH2, reaching only the signature numeral. Light staining on several leaves.