PIRO (Henricus de). Super Institutiones. [Cologne, Johann Koelhoff the Elder, c. 1481-1482]. In-folio, fawn calf stamped on wood, spine decorated with gilt fillets (contemporary binding). First or second of three incunabula editions of this important commentary on the Institutes, the part of the Corpus juris civilis promulgated in 533 by the Byzantine emperor Justinian I. This legal treatise was written by the German jurist Heinrich von dem Birnbaum (1403-1473), known in Latin as Henricus de Piro, who was a jurist and professor of law at the universities of Cologne and Louvain. A Carthusian monk, he was also the author of numerous works of instruction and spiritual direction for members of his order, founded by Saint Bruno in 1084, and was prior of the Carthusian monastery of Mont-Saint-André in Tournai in 1438, then successively prior of Wesel, Rettel, Trier, Diest and Liège, before retiring to the Carthusian monastery in Cologne. There were only three editions of this treatise by Henricus de Piro before 1500: the first two in Cologne around 1481-1482, and the third in Louvain around 1486-1488. As none of them is precisely dated, the Gesamtkatalog, like Polain, gives priority to the other Cologne edition, published by Conrad Winters, dating this one to around 1482; other bibliographers, on the other hand, consider this to be the original edition, which they believe appeared around 1481, while they date Conrad Winters' edition to around 1482. This is a very rare Germanic incunabulum, of which no copies are preserved in French institutions and only one in the United States (at the Library of Congress). The ISTC lists only 25 copies worldwide (some of which are incomplete), compared with 39 for the Conrad Winters edition (including one at the BnF and 4 in the United States). As far as we know, none of these copies has been on the market for a long time. A copy entirely rubricated in red and blue, decorated with fine handwritten initials at the head of the chapters, as well as a magnificent illuminated initials with a gold background at the beginning of the text (f. 10) and a large blue and red watermarked initials at the beginning of the table (f. 2). A copy with good margins and internally fresh, with a few handwritten annotations from the period and, at the end of the volume, an important handwritten table from the period, calligraphed in red and brown on 31 two-column ff. Spine rebound in the 18th century; first cover almost detached, clasps missing, wormholes and epidermis on covers, a few marginal tears without affecting the text, a few leaves of the handwritten table disbound. ISTC ip00650000 - Cop. 1356 - GW 12257 - Goff P-650 - Pol. 1870.