The digital library | copy-english

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our digital Library

For its Digital Library project Mansutti Foundation, with the contribution of Lombardy Region, has compiled a collection in electronic format of its most valuable texts, which allows them to be consulted from the furthest places of study and makes them available to scholars in their original format and colour. This project started in 2009 with a first selection of some of the most representative and important texts on the history of insurance in Europe.

An integral reproduction on CD-Rom of each of the works shown here is available at the Foundation (€ 75.00 + postage).

I'Sm a tinnnntle

The De contractibus et usuris is one of the first treaties on contracts, if not the first one, which developed a study on economic thought. This valuable handwritten code, which can be dated back to the second half of the fifteenth century, tackles the need for commerce and the ethical rules according to which it must be exercised and also discusses the fair value of things and the relative fair price.

San Bernardino of Siena

Benvenuto Stracca

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Balthazard M. Emerigon

Emerigon’s excellent reputation as jurist is mostly linked to this treaty, which covers all maritime law with extensive references to previous laws and doctrine. Complete with numerous court rulings, this work has long been considered a benchmark on insurance issues and was translated into Spanish, Italian and English. The English translation contributed to the huge diffusion of this work and was re-printed both in London and Boston (1850).

The Tractatus de assecurationibus was completed after eleven years’ work and this first edition was published in Venice in 1569 and, together with other works, re-published always in Venice in 1583, in Geneva in 1651 and in Amsterdam in 1658 and 1668. This treaty focuses on a commentary (divided into forty glosses in Latin) of the conventional formula (in Italian) which is still used in Ancona for insurance contracts.

Pedro Santerna

Chronologically the Tractatus de assecurationibus & sponsionibus mercatorum represents the first systematic treaty on insurance which, among other things, clearly sets out the fundamental principle on which this type of contract is based, i.e. good faith. This editio princeps (1552) was printed over 60 years after its actual compilation, which according to a manuscript kept at the Biblioteca Angelica Vaticana dates back to 1488.

Nicolas Magens was a German merchant who lived for a long time in England. This treaty, which is an extended and corrected translation of the work published in Hamburg in 1753, explains the different types of insurance which were used in various European trading places and discloses the relationship existing between insurance, equity and public good. In this manual, which is divided into two books, the Author tries to solve various doubts which may arise on the interpretation of the innumerable laws on the subject.

Nicolas Magens

Ascanio Baldasseroni

Born in Leghorn, in 1786 Ascanio Baldasseroni published a Trattato delle assicurazioni marittime in 3 volumes and subsequently printed this more exhaustive edition in 5 volumes between 1801 and 1804. In this seminal work insurance contracts are examined for the first time with reference to laws, customs, case-law and the doctrine of the main European trading places. In the addendum the Author gathered law and custom texts concerning maritime insurance contracts.

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