Precis des Anciennes et Nouvelles Ordonnances, Edits et Declarations.

1724. France, 1724. [287] ff. Quarto (9" x 6-1/2").. France, 1724. [287] ff. Quarto (9" x 6-1/2"). Handsome 1724 Manuscript Digest of Royal Decrees Relating to Provence [Manuscript]. [Barrigue de Montvalon, Andre (1678-1779]. [Bornier, Philippe (1634-1711)]. Precis des Anciennes et Nouvelles Ordonnances, Edits et Declarations les Plus en Usage avec Quelques Observations sur le Commentaire de Bornier. Aix-en-Provence, 1724. [287] ff. Quarto (9" x 6-1/2"). Contemporary calf, gilt spine with raised bands and lettering piece reading Precis des Ordnna, gilt tooling to board edges, edges of text block rouged, marbled endpapers, ribbon marker. Minor nicks, scuffs, worming and stains to boards, moderate rubbing to extremities with some wear to corners, front joint starting at foot. Light toning to interior, light soiling to preliminary leaves, minor worming along gutter in a few places, neatly written text in red and black ink within red ruled borders. A notably handsome manuscript. $1,500. * Barrigue de Montvalon was a legal advisor to the Parlement of Provence. His carefully compiled, handsomely produced manuscript book is a digest of ordonnances (royal decrees) from 1667 to 1681 relating to Provence that were in force in 1724. The topics are arranged alphabetically from "Abolition (Letters of)" to "Usury." It circulated for a number of years in manuscript and was first printed in 1752 (with a second edition in 1766). The compiler of our manuscript combined Montvalon's work with content copied from Bornier's Conferences des Nouvelles Ordonnances de Louis XIV. Roy de France et de Navarre, Avec Celles des Rois Predecesseurs de Sa Majeste, Le Droit Ecrit, & Les Arrets; Enrichies d'Annotations et Decisions Importantes (first ed. 1681). As stated in the preface, content in red ink refers to Bornier's work. Some of these references are interpretive or critical. The main text is enriched with side-notes and two indexes, each titled Table. The side-notes indicate the dates of the ordonnances; the first Table is an index of topics, the second is a list of ordonnances in chronological order. We located a manuscript similar to ours dated 1728 at the Bibliotheque de Droit Schuman in Aix-en-Provence (MS87) and others with later dates at the Bibliotheque Municipale a Vocation Regionale, Nice. A note on the bibliographic record for the Schuman manuscript says it is the first manuscript edition. Ours is.