Revista europea de historia de las ideas políticas y de las instituciones públicas
ISSN versión electrónica: 2174-0135
ISSN versión impresa: 2386-6926
Depósito Legal: MA 2135-2014
Presidente del C.R.: Antonio Ortega Carrillo de Albornoz
Director: Manuel J. Peláez
Editor: Juan Carlos Martínez Coll
Alejandro Rodríguez Carrión, Antonio Ortega Carrillo de Albornoz, José Calvo González and María José Casado Cañero, In Theatro librorum. Fondo antiguo en la Biblioteca de la Facultad de Derecho, Faculty of Law, University of Malaga, 2009 [2010], 213 pp.
María del Carmen Amaya Galván
ABSTRACT: This book is the result of the joint effort carried out during the first thirty years of the Law Faculty of the University of Malaga to compile an ample catalogue of ancient books on legal matters and from many different European publishing houses, published between the XVIth and XIXth centuries. Cultivated legal literature in print. Moreover, it has been an effort towards not only cultural and physical preservation of the memory of European Law against the ravages of both time and book destruction because of mistreatment, negligence or oblivion, but also to defend the archaeological, and contemporary, value of the plurality of legal dialogue throughout books. The authors of this exquisite book, as regards its paper quality and illustrations, outline news about the historical developments of the Faculty, its library, its ancient and valuable books room, and its bibliographic collection.
KEY WORDS: Law, Europe, Book culture, Legal print, Alejandro Rodr�guez Carri�n, Antonio Ortega Carrillo de Albornoz, Jos� Calvo Gonz�lez, Mar�a Jos� Casado Ca�ero, Mar�a Jos� P�rez Garz�n.
We would like to introduce a book which includes the Catalogue of ancient legal books in the Faculty of Law of the University of Malaga. It has been compiled to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of this Faculty which started its academic activity in 1979-1980 academic year, even though the first lectures were delivered in January 1980 by lecturers who came to Malaga from different places.
This Catalogue is due to both Antonio Ortega Carrillo de Albornoz, Roman Law professor of this University, and Alejandro Rodr�guez Carri�n�s initiative. The latter was then Dean of the Law Faculty as well as Public International Law professor, and despite having been suffering a terrible illness which ended his life, he had been devoted to managing and promoting all sorts of activities in the Faculty in the eighteen months prior to his passing and he had taken on this Catalogue as his ultimate goal. His dedication to these activities and to the Law Library was recognized by academic authorities and, as a result, since February 2010 the Library is named after him as Rodr�guez Carri�n Library. The plaque on which its name is engraved also depicts his particular glasses resting on an open book but this design, together with its rough material, hasn�t been fully liked by some.
Rodr�guez Carri�n and Ortega Carrillo de Albornoz were later joined by Jos� Calvo Gonz�lez, Philosophy of Law professor in the University of Malaga, a learned man in many fields, among which is a deep knowledge of ancient, rare and curious books. He is also the author of the preface to the first catalogue of ancient books of the Law Faculty in Malaga, which was published in 1990 to commemorate the tenth anniversary of this institution and was compiled by Ana Mar�a Vera Delgado and Gregorio Garc�a Reche. This time, Mar�a Jos� Casado Ca�ero, director of the Law Faculty Library, with the help of Mar�a Jos� P�rez Garz�n, deputy director, have been responsible for the meticulous systematization, which can be clearly improved, of the ancient book Catalogue, which compiles 255 books, the last of which being that by Robert Watson on king Philip III, published in London in 1793.
The book has a preface, which is called �Praelectio�, by Rodr�guez Carri�n, where we can find an outline of the history of the Faculty which focuses its attention on the evolution of the Library and on the founding of the �Dr. Antonio Ortega Carrillo de Albornoz� research room. This room had 1,632 books, published before 1900, when the preface was written (there are a few more books nowadays), and 255 of these books, published between 1505 and 1800, were selected to become part of the Catalogue. Rodr�guez Carri�n also deals with special donations to the collection.
Antonio Ortega offers an amusing recount of the thirty years of the Law Faculty in Malaga, which has had three different locations. According to him, the spacious building surrounded by gardens on the Teatinos campus and the fact that the teaching staff have separate offices, which are geographically distant from each other, have contributed to the improvement of relationships among different subject area lecturers since 1991.
Jos� Calvo Gonz�lez, by applying his stimulating theories on the relationship between Law and Literature, outlines a few ideas regarding the convenience to preserve ancient printed books by storing them in suitable locations so as to prevent their deterioration and make them available for consultation exclusively to specialists on the subject.
The book is full of illustrations, especially so in the �Imaginatio figurae� section (pp. 33-103), whose authors are Ortega Carrillo de Albornoz and Calvo Gonz�lez.
The Catalogue, which comprises printed books up to 1800, includes publications on Civil Law, Canon Law, Justinian Roman Law, Civil Procedural Law, Criminal Law, Commercial Law, Public International Law, Maritime Navigation Law, etc. Since this review is published in a journal on the history of political ideas and public institutions, we have only selected those books related to political and administration institutions, and to political ideas, which are really scarce. Therefore, we will not deal with those books of a more general nature devoted to either Public, Private, Criminal and Procedural Law at the same time or to Public and Procedural Canon Law.
The books mentioned above are the following (the numbers in square brackets correspond to their position in the Catalogue):
1. [16]. Jacob Friedrich von Bielefeld (1717-1770), Instituciones pol�ticas: obra, en que se trata de la sociedad civil, de las leyes, de la Polic�a, de la Real Hacienda, del comercio, y Fuerzas del Estado, translated from French into Spanish by Domingo de la Torre Mollinedo, Madrid, 1767-1772, 6 Vols.
2. [17]. Jean Blanc de Volx, Coup-d��il politique sur l�Europe, � la fin du XVIII�me si�cle, Paris, 1800, 2 Vols.
3. [18]. Lambert Bos (1670-1717), Antiquitatum graecarum, praecipuae atticarum: descriptio brevis, Leiden, 1740, 136 + 60 pp.
4. [22]. Pedro Rodr�guez, Conde de Campomanes (1723-1802), Juicio imparcial sobre las letras en forma de breve que ha publicado la Curia Romana en que se intentan derogar ciertos edictos del seren�simo se�or infante Duque de Parma y disputarle la soberan�a temporal con este pretexto, Madrid, 1769, 8 + 337 + 8 + 48 pp.
5. [24]. Pierre Joseph Cantel (1645-1684), De Romana Republica sive De re militari et civili ad explicandos scriptores antiquos, Naples, 1763, 428 pp.
6. [43]. Anonymous, Ordenanzas para el gobierno y r�gimen de la congregaci�n de Maestros de Obras de la ciudad de Valencia concedidas por S. M., Valencia, 1797, 15 pp.
7. [58]. Nicol� Donato (1539-1618), El hombre de Estado, written in Italian, translated into French and, then, from French into Spanish, Madrid, 1789, XVIII + 440 pp.
8. [73]. Johan Paul Felwinger (1616-1681), Dissertatio politica quam auxiliante Teo T. O. M. sub praesidio DN M. Joh. Pauli Felwinger..., 1676, 46 pp.
9. [101]. Fernando Gonz�lez de Socueva Arias, Instrucci�n manual para la m�s breve expedici�n de los casos pr�cticos, y disputas de inmunidad local: noticia hist�rica de su origen, progresos, Sevilla, c. 1776, 8 + 335 pp.
10. [150, 151, 152, 153, 154 y 155]. M. de la Croix (1743-1832), Constitutions des principaux �tats de l�Europe, et des �tats-Unis de l�Am�rique, Paris, 1791-1801, 6 Vols.
11. [163]. Louis-L�on-F�licit� de Brancas, Count of Lauraguais, (1733-1824), Dissertation sur les assembl�es nationales sous les trois races des rois de France, Paris, 1788, 103 pp.
12. [171 y 172]. Gabriel Bonnot de Mably (1709-1785), Le droit public de l�Europe, fond� sur les trait�s, G�neve, 1748, 2 Vols., 10 + 432 y 331 pp.
13. [250]. Vicente Vizca�no P�rez, Compendio del Derecho p�blico y com�n de Espa�a o de las leyes de las Siete Partidas, Madrid, 1784, 2 Vols.
The publishing of this Catalogue has been an excellent idea even though the luxurious edition whose paper grammage, being so expensive, seems inappropriate in these times of economic crisis.
The book was published in February 2010, in spite of the fact that printing was finished on 31 December 2009, as it is stated in the book. Therefore, this work can be considered as a tribute to the person who, even if it was not his original idea, made every effort to put it into practice but was unable to see it finished for Alejandro Rodr�guez Carri�n passed away on 13th May 2009. [Recibido el 5 de noviembre de 2010].
Nota bene:
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