Born probably in the early 1360s as a Bolognese citizen, Antonius de Butrio (Antonio da Budrio, from a small town about 9 miles east of Bologna) studied canon law in Bologna under Petrus de Ancarano. He received a doctorate in civil law in 1384, and one in canon law in 1387. Celebrated primarily as a teacher of law, his juristic writings received a mixed and often negative treatment from later jurists. From 1387 until his death in 1408, Antonius migrated frequently to teaching positions in Bologna, Perugia, Florence and Ferrara. In 1406/07 Antonius took part in a papal mission to the antipope Benedict XIII in an attempt to resolve the schism through the via cessionis. His most important students were Johannes de Imola and Dominicus de Sancto Geminiano.¹

¹This paragraph is derived, with modifications, from Kenneth Pennington in Medieval Canonists: A Bio-Bibliographical Listing (http://faculty.cua.edu/pennington/1298a-z.htm, last visited, 21 May 2011). For what follows see also L. Prosdocimi, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, 3 (1961) (online), and O. Condorelli, in Dizionario Biografico dei Giuristi Italiani (Bologna 2013), 1.80–83. Condorelli is the source of the suggested birth date. That makes so much sense in the light of what else we know about Antonius’ career that one has to wonder how it was accepted for so long that the date was as early as 1338.

Antonius is best known for his commentaries on the Decretals and on the Sext, both of which we present here in digitized form from sixteenth-century printed editions. A number of printed editions exist of his consilia (Roma 1472, 1474; Pavia 492; Lyon 1541; Venezia 1493, 1575, 1582), and there are more in manuscript. He wrote a consilium De schismate tollendo, which was printed in the 17th century (Annalium ecclesiasticorum post ... Caesarem Baronium ... tomus XV (Köln 1622) 268–70) (online), a Tractatus ad cardinales Pisanum concilium habentes, which was printed from an incomplete manuscript in the 18th century (Mansi, Sacrorum Conciliorum amplissima collectio [Venezia 1784], 27.313–330) (LLMC Digital, by subscription), a Tractatus de iure patronatus (attribution uncertain), which was printed in the 16th century (Frankfurt 1581, 1609), a Tractatus de notorio (TUI 1584, v.4 fol. 50ra – 57va), and various repetitiones and lecturae, known from early printed editions (e.g., Bologna 1474; Pavia 1493; Venezia 1587), and there are said to be more in manuscript. He also wrote a Repertorium in iure canonico and another in iure civili, which so far as we are aware, exist only in manuscript.

Perhaps because he is less well-known than his younger contemporary Panormitanus, there has been less work done on Antonius than there has been on Panormitanus (1386–1445), and on those, such as Francesco Zabarella (1360–1417), who were active at the councils. Antonius saw the beginning of the schism, and it obviously concerned him. He died (quite young, if a recent revision of his birth date is right, and of the plague), shortly before the beginning of the council of Pisa. As is the case with Panormitanus, however, relatively little of his published work concerns the schism (see, however, his commentary ad X 1.2.1 no. 10), and if we want to get into the legal mind at the turn of the fifteenth century, it is to the commentaries and consilia that we must look.

Our digital edition is based on a set of reprints published by Bottega d’Erasmo in 1967. There are, in fact, two sixteenth-century printings represented here. The first four physical volumes are a reprint of the Giunta edition of Antonius’ commentaries on the decretals, published in Venice in 1578. The fifth physical volume is a reprint of the edition of Antonius’ commentaries on the Sext, published by Francesco Ziletti in Venice in 1575. (The HOLLIS catalogue entry is quite misleading on this topic.)

The Giunta edition of the commentary on the Decretals has eight title pages, each with an end page and a register, two of which are reprinted in each physical volume: parts 1 and 2 of Book 1 (the second part beginning at X 1.17), parts 1 and 2 of Book 2 (the second part beginning at X 2.19), Book 3, Book 4, Book 5, and an Index. There is no dedicatory epistle or advice to the reader, but each item is accompanied by an extensive summary of points discussed, all of which are gathered alphabetically in the Index.

On the verso of all the title pages except for the Index there is an alphbetical list of titles that are found in the volume (called tomus). Stamped below this (it is missing on book 5) on the copy that Bottega d’Erasmo photographed is the heraldic device of M. F. Nicolaus Oliva Generalis totius Ordinis Eremitarum Sancti Augustini Aug. 1673, who can be identified as Niccolò Oliva, the prior general of the Augustinians from 1673 to 1679, and bishop of Cortona (prov. Arezzo) from 1677 until his death in 1684. See David Perini, Bibliographia Augustiniana (Firenze 1935) vol. 3, s.n. Oliva (online).

Each of the title pages in the Decretals features the printer’s device of Luca-Antonio Giunta, 1457–1538, the Florentine lilly braced with the initials L A. Luca-Antonio was, of course, long dead when the book was printed, but the firm continued to use his device. The rendition on the title pages is surrounded by an elaborate rendering of five allegorical figures embedded in architecture, justice at the top, what may be astronomy and literature on the bottom left and right, and two right under justice that we have yet to identify. The basic device of Luca-Antonio also appears on otherwise blank pages at the end of tomes 3 and 7 and the Index, but the surrounding elaboration is different. That which accompanies tome 3 has no figures but an unidentified face at the top, and bears the motto flos justitiae.The device at the end of tome 7 amd the Index has a single figure of justice at the top and no motto.

The Giunta foliation is quite regular, beginning with the title page (which is not marked) and running, normally, to the end page. We have expanded it in our metadata to include the rectos and versos. The Index is not foliated. We have supplied the signatures for the Index, which are marked (except for the first A) as B, B2, B3, and B4, then skipping to C, C2, etc. As the register notes, the last two signatures are ternions; all the rest are quaternions.

Bottega d’Erasmo supplied verso foliation with folio number follwed by ‘A’ and paginated the Index in arabic, starting at the letter A. We are not sure that either of these is particularly useful in the reprint, and would, of course, be quite useless for anyone who had the original.

For the metadata, we did not check the titles systematically against the modern edition of the Decretals, but where we noted discrepancies, we marked things that are in the modern edition with [] and things that are added in this edition with <>. Similarly, we did not check systematically for wrong running heads, but noted them when we saw them.

The Sext begins with a dedicatory epistle of Francesco Ziletti to Giacomo Lomellino [del Canto], archbishop of Palermo, 1571–1575. One hopes that he got it to him quickly, because Giacomo died on 9 August 1575, the same year in which the book was published. (He probably didn’t make it with book, because the epistle to the reader, which follows, is dated in Venice, 15 August 1575.)

The epistle to the reader is by one Hieronimus Sapcotus Anglus, who says that he checked the work for printer’s errors. (The description of him is followed by et in iure civili Lyta, of which we can make no sense unless it is an elaborate joke, based on the Greek word lytta.) A Hieronimus Sapcotus Anglus, almost certainly the same man, published a work entitled Ad primas leges Digestorum. De verborum & rerum significatione, in Venice in 1579. None of the cataloguers have identified him any further, but the name is almost certainly derived from Sapcote in Leicestershire. (James Harrington [the author of Oceana] was the son of Sir Sapcotes Harrington.) Ian Maclean renders the name as Jerome Sapcote (Interpretation and Meaning in the Renaissance: The Case of Law [Cambridge 1992] 96), which is almost certainly right, but Maclean is quoting the book, and doesn’t tell anything about what a Brit, with decidedly humanistic leanings, was doing in Venice in the 1570s.

The printed edition begins with an elaborate index that has managed to confuse cataloguers. The commentary proper begins on the first numbered folio. It skips VI 1.1 De summa Trinitate. The content of that title is theological, and we might well imagine that Antonius skipped it in his lectures. It then proceeds to comment on all the titles in the Sext from VI 1.2 (De constitutionibus) through VI 2.10 (De testibus). We have not checked all the capitula, but we have the impression that very few, if any, are omitted. It then leaves out the last six titles of book 2 and the first 3 of book 3, to begin commenting on VI 3.4 (De praebendis). It then proceeds sysematically through titles V 3.4, .5., .6, and .7 (De concessione praebendae). No capitulum in these titles seems to be ommitted, and that includes all 41 of capitula in De praebendis, although some of the commentary is a bit skimpier than it had been previously. At this point the book ends, leaving out the remaining titles in book 3 and all of books 4 and 5.

It is possible that this is all that there was, that is, that Antonius never finished his commentary on the Sext. It is also possible that this was all that Ziletti was able to find and that there once was, and perhaps there still is, more in manuscript. There is, so far as we are aware, no systematic census of Antonius manuscripts.

Foliation does not begin until the commentary. We have given the signature numbers for the two signatures from the title page to the end of the index. The only signature that we have been able to find in the first signature is a2, but the second signature has a full b, b2, b3, and b4. Bottega d’Earasmo has added pagination in majuscule roman numerals starting with the first page of the Index.

The image that appears on the title page of the commentary on the Sext is not Francesco Ziletti’s normal printer’s device, a star with the motto inter omnes. It is, rather, an image of Orpheus, accompanied by the motto vis in virtute coelestis. The image is well-described by a German bookseller, who apparently had only the image for sale, and it appears on an edition of Consilia published by Ziletti in 1578, in the union catalogue of Bolognese libraries.