139. Werbőczi István: Decretum.

... Az az, Magyar és Erdely Országnac Törvény Könyve. Heltai Gaspartol wyonnan meg nyomtattot.
Colosvarot, 1571. (Heltai ny.) 1pl. (engraved additional title page)+(6)p.+174 leaves+(19)p. Title page and the following three leaves replaced by copies on handmade paper.
Manual of Hungarian customary law. At the urging of the Diet and at the request of King Vladislaus II, István Werbőczi codified the laws of Hungary and presented the work to the Diet of 1514. Although it never attained the force of law (except in Transylvania, where the princes swore to uphold it as national law), it nevertheless served as the standard handbook of Hungarian law until 1848. Balázs Weres’s abridged Hungarian translation first appeared in Debrecen in 1565; the present edition is Heltai Gáspár’s revised version of that translation, essentially modernising the cumbersome orthography while altering the text only in places. Heltai omitted the “Summa” prepared by Weres and replaced it with a translation of Werbőczi’s preface. This is the first edition whose title explicitly refers to Transylvania. The woodcut on the engraved title page (Heracles slaying the Nemean lion) had first been used by Heltai in his 1554 edition of Tinódi.
Exceptionally rare; to our knowledge, only one copy has appeared at auction during approximately the past half century.
Restored, 20th-century half leather in half cloth case.
RMNY 307.; RMK I 87.; Csekey: 5.                               
 
Starting price: 2 000 000 Ft