Sardinia, in 1749. He studied law at Sassari and Turin, and in 1782 was
made judge of the consulate at Nice. In 1786-1788 he published his
_Dizionario Universale Ragionato della Giurisprudenza Mercantile_. In 1795
appeared his systematic work on the maritime law of Europe, _Sistema
Universale dei Principii del Diritto Maritimo dell' Europa_, which he
afterwards recast and translated into French. In 1806 he was appointed one
of the French commission engaged in drawing up a general code of commercial
law, and in the following year he proceeded to Genoa as president of the
court of appeal. After the fall of Napoleon in 1814, Azuni lived for a time
in retirement at Genoa, till he was invited to Sardinia by Victor Emmanuel
I., and appointed judge of the consulate at Cagliari, and director of the
university library. He died at Cagliari in 1827. Azuni also wrote numerous
pamphlets and minor works, chiefly on maritime law, an important treatise
on the origin and progress of maritime law (Paris, 1810), and an
historical, geographical and political account of Sardinia (1799, enlarged
1802).

AZURARA, GOMES EANNES DE (?-1474), the second notable Portuguese chronicler
in order of date. He adopted the career of letters in middle life. He
probably entered the royal library as assistant to Fernao Lopes (_q.v._)
during the reign of King Duarte (1433-1438), and he had sole charge of it
in 1452. His _Chronicle of the Siege and Capture of Ceuta_, a supplement to
the _Chronicle of King John I._, by Lopes, dates from 1450, and three years
later he completed the first draft of the _Chronicle of the Discovery and
Conquest of Guinea_, our authority for the early Portuguese voyages of
discovery down the African coast and in the ocean, more especially for
those undertaken under the auspices of Prince Henry the Navigator. It
contains some account of the life work of that prince, and has a
biographical as well as a geographical interest. On the 6th of June 1454
Azurara became chief keeper of the archives and royal chronicler in
succession to Fernao Lopes. In 1456 King Alphonso V. commissioned him to
write the history of Ceuta, "the land-gate of the East," under the
governorship of D. Pedro de Menezes, from its capture in 1415 until 1437,
and he had it ready in 1463. A year afterwards the king charged him with a
history of the deeds of D. Duarte de Menezes, captain of Alcacer, and,
proceeding to Africa, he spent a twelvemonth in the town collecting