Földvári Books

Money, Value, and Coinage During the Price Revolution

Bressoles, Bernard-Symphorien

De Solutione Canonis Emphyteuticarii Tractatus Et in legem Paulus I. ff. de solut. & liberat. differendi exercitatio: qua eiusdem legis genuina interpretatio demonstratur, & de numi vel pecuniae institutione, proprietate, visive natura atque energia, totáque ipsus ratione, usu fine &c.; Adiunctis ac consequentibus non minus luculenter, quàm copiosè disputatur : tum etiam exemploru[m] varietas, & maxima controversiaru[m] restibilitas discutitur: ac tandem nostrae tempestatis in quacumque solutione, & praesertim census tributíve ius summum, atque ex hisce omnibus monetarum abusus (Regiae Maiestati absistentes) cum eos emendandi modo patefacti proponuntur. B. Symphreno Bressollo iurium Doctore, ac in Lorigenensi praefectura Regio Consiliario Suctore. Ex Secunda Editione.

Tolosae [Toulouse]: apud Arnaldum & Iacobum Colomerios, Academie Tolosanae Typographos [Arnaud and Jacques Colomiès], 1580. First edition. [Mispagination: p. 91 numbered 19; after p. 129 the pagination recommences at 127; pp. 159–160 omitted in pagination, as issued; complete.]. Contemporary limp vellum binding, sewn on supports, with remains of four leather fore-edge ties. Collation: A–Z⁴ &⁴ 2A–2E⁴; Pagination: [12] (title, privilege, nuncupatory epistle), 1–128, 127–158, 161–181; [3] (errata); [19] (commendatory verse. Early manuscript inscription to lower rear cover. Binding slightly rubbed and stained, with old wear to joints and extremities; head of spine defective with minor loss, ties partly preserved. Text block sound, with minor paper flaws as issued to D1 and Z3. Pages lightly toned, with occasional foxing. Tiny wormholes at the lower outer and inner margins of the final quires. Contemporary ink underlining on pp. 1 and 147. Otherwise in very good condition.

An extremely scarce and now virtually forgotten Toulouse legal treatise on money, value, and coinage, written during the Price Revolution, Europe’s first great inflationary crisis.

An exceptionally rare and largely forgotten contribution to sixteenth-century monetary thought, printed at Toulouse during the French Wars of Religion. Presented as a legal discussion of emphyteutic rents, the work develops into a broad investigation of money, value, contractual obligation, public authority, taxation, commerce, and monetary policy, addressing questions that stood at the centre of European economic debate during the age of the Price Revolution.

The author, Bernard Symphorien Bressolles, describes himself in a series of autobiographical and dedicatory texts included in the volume as a native of Quillan in Languedoc, educated first in the liberal arts and subsequently in philosophy and law. He studied under the celebrated jurist François Baudouin, received the degree of prolyta in law, taught philosophy publicly for several years, and later pursued advanced legal studies at Toulouse. He also recounts the circumstances that gave rise to the present treatise, written amid the prolonged monetary disturbances accompanying the French Wars of Religion.

Rejecting a purely metallic conception of currency, Bressolles argues that monetary value depends not only upon the gold or silver contained in a coin but also upon public authority, legal estimation, and common acceptance. In the process he ranges well beyond the immediate legal dispute to address circulation, exchange values, public finance, monetary policy, and the economic consequences of currency manipulation. The result places the work among the major sixteenth-century discussions generated by the Price Revolution and the influx of American silver into Europe, alongside the writings of Martín de Azpilcueta, Jean Bodin, Tomás de Mercado, Luis de Molina, and other leading theorists of money and exchange.

The volume also preserves a substantial body of material relating to its author. Dedicated to Jean Daffis, first president of the Parlement of Toulouse, and to the celebrated magistrate Jean-Étienne Duranti, it includes autobiographical texts and numerous poems contributed by former students, colleagues, advocates, and fellow jurists. These reveal a figure who, far from being an obscure provincial lawyer, enjoyed considerable esteem within the legal and academic circles of Toulouse. The contributors describe him as a distinguished teacher, learned jurist, and respected member of the city’s intellectual community.

Yet despite this contemporary reputation, both Bressolles and his treatise subsequently disappeared almost entirely from view. Apart from a nineteenth-century study by Gustave Bressolles (L’article 1895 du Code civil et un jurisconsulte inconnu du XVIe siècle, Recueil de l’Académie de législation de Toulouse, 1896, pp. 216–261), which identified the work as an important contribution to contemporary monetary debates, no substantial modern study of either the author or the book appears to exist. Particularly intriguing is the author’s repeated reference to an earlier edition of the treatise printed in 1577, apparently now untraced and unrecorded in USTC, FB, or other modern bibliographical sources.

Far more than a technical legal tract, the present work stands at the intersection of jurisprudence, commerce, public finance, and monetary theory, offering a contemporary analysis of money, value, coinage, and contractual obligation during one of the most turbulent monetary periods of early modern Europe. As such, it deserves recognition as a neglected contribution to the history of money and economic thought in the age of Bodin, Azpilcueta, and the Price Revolution.

USTC (111955) records only three institutional copies (Bibliothèque Lamartine, Mende; Bibliothèque universitaire de Toulouse; and Médiathèque José Cabanis, Toulouse), while FB (59069) records only the first two. No records in RBH.

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Price: €25,000.00