1 An Unexciting Path?
Undoubtedly, the history of the ius naturae et gentium in early modern Rome â conceived both as an intellectual tradition and as a new academic discipline coming from Protestant lands â has not attracted much attention from historiography. Scholars have been more interested in the birth of âpublic lawâ and modern âpublic international lawâ on the nineteenth-century Italian Peninsula1 or, concerning the eighteenth century, the creation and development of official university chairs of âLaw of Nature and of Nationsâ have aroused greater interest.2 Moreover, the ius naturae et gentium has often been seen, in Italian legal history, only in the light of the traditional conflict between the mos gallicus and mos italicus, and not as an integral part of the intellectual trajectory of a specific academic subject â albeit multifaceted â already widespread in many parts of Europe.3 Moreover, of all the so-called âancient Statesâ of pre-unified Italy, the Papal States could have been considered the least interesting context to look for the reception of Protestant natural law. They were of course the bulwark of Catholic orthodoxy and Roman law, part of the âmost archaic Italyâ (lâItalia piuÌ arcaica), as Franco Venturi famously put it,4 and for that reason âless efficient, less rational and less rationalizableâ than other regions, for example Naples, Milan and Venice. Indeed, a long-established opinion sees the eighteenth and nineteenth-century papacy as an irremediably old-fashioned and close-minded cultural world, backward and averse to changes, therefore unsuitable for acknowledging the novelties of the Enlightenment. This unfavourable image was partly caused by the anti-clerical stance of many figures of the Italian Risorgimento,5 had a very long life and gave birth to many controversies among historians, who, for the most part, may well have considered the study of modern natural law in Enlightenment Rome as an unexciting path. However, the most insightful scholarship has rightly criticized this straightforward unenthusiastic picture of the Papal States,6 by emphasizing the need to identify different phases in their history, and by highlighting the cultural contribution of a greater variety of actors in Roman intellectual life, starting from the Popes themselves, up to writers, artists, scholars (both lay and ecclesiastic), publishers, booksellers and government officials, as well as putting in better light the role played by cafeÌs, academies, universities and the like. Certainly, the manifold difficulties of the slow, tortuous reception of the ideas of the Enlightenment in the Papal States cannot be denied. But my intention here is not to look for hard (if not impossible) to find cases of plain and unhesitating acceptance of the most innovative and provocative ideas of the Enlightenment in eighteenth-century Rome, where âtraditionâ was still a cultural value of paramount importance, and where the universities were undoubtedly anchored to old-fashioned methods and weakened by internal power struggles.7 Instead, more modestly, I would like to add a few to the âsmall and limited germs of renewalâ that even Venturi saw in the papacy of the time,8 by focusing on the interesting ways in which a few distinguished professors at La Sapienza received but at the same time adapted and adjusted some famous â or infamous â authors of early modern natural law and the law of nations, conceived as a plural endeavour and not as a clearly homogenous philosophical school. Also, I hope to show that it is unfair to maintain that, in Rome, âfor the actual encounter with the scientific and rationalist outlook we cannot look to the universitiesâ.9 Notwithstanding the many difficulties in finding the available sources, due to the vicissitudes of the archives concerning La Sapienza,10 and the lack of accurate manuscript copies of university lectures relevant to our topic,11 luckily the major figures in the reception of ius naturae et gentium at the Studium Urbis wrote and published several works, from which we can get a fairly precise picture of the ideas and methods they adopted in university teaching.
I will concentrate on Gian Vincenzo Gravina (1664â1718) and Emmanuele Duni (1714â1781), whose lives and teachings will be linked to the intellectual life of papal Rome and to the intricate history of the academic choices that led eventually to the formal establishment in the Law Faculty at La Sapienza of a chair of ânatural law, public law and the law of nationsâ. This happened only in 1824, but the subject had already been at least partially formalized as a course on ânatural law and the law of nationsâ at the Faculty of Philosophy and Arts since 1788.
2 âTricks of Acrobatsâ and âChildâs Fablesâ
It is true that the Roman cultural environment, on the eve of the eighteenth century, was rather refractory to new ideas in the liberal arts, as in science. The Celestine Father Celestino Galiani (1681â1753), one of the leading exponents of Italian Newtonianism in Naples and Rome, and professor of church history at La Sapienza from 1718, wrote to a friend in 1705 about scientific experiments: âwhat is to be feared is not so much the Inquisitor as the belief of men who hold [experiments] to be little more than tricks of acrobatsâ.12 The situation was difficult also regarding the introduction of the new vision of the relationship between morality and politics coming from natural jurisprudence. Scepticism about this new vogue was famously expressed by Cardinal Giovanni Battista De Luca (1614â1683), a very influential figure in legal studies in Rome at the end of the seventeenth-century (though very critical of the corruption of academic teaching at La Sapienza).13 In a series of writings, De Luca repeatedly scorned âmodernâ natural law tenets, such as the primeval community of goods and lands, and the theories of the origins of law and society, as âchildâs fablesâ and âchimerasâ, urging law students and magistrates to stick strictly to legal practice. Indeed, the brilliant but short-lived teaching of Marc-Antoine Muret (1526â1585), a star of legal humanism and professor at the Sapienza from 1563 to 1585, had by De Lucaâs time been long forgotten.14 In De Lucaâs eyes, the main problem of natural law was that, apart from precepts directly derived from divine law, it was of little practical use, since âwe do not know in which volumes such laws are recorded, what their tenor is, what were the authors and legislators, and what authority obliged also the sovereign princesâ.15 Moreover, a commitment to natural law could lead to âerrors and fables from which many misunderstandings about the power of princes may ariseâ.16 It is clear that the tradition of natural law De Luca was referring to was not the âorthodox Catholicâ one, but the dangerous one coming from modern Protestant writers. This is apparent in a passage of Il cavaliere e la dama (The knight and the lady, 1675), an interesting picture of Roman culture at the time, where De Luca makes a scornful catalogue of these ânewâ ideas:
The invention and introduction of many things, even modern ones, are accredited by some people as if those things were not there before. Such as the introduction of civil life, and the society of men in civic society, as well as in inhabited places, almost as if they lived on their own as wild beasts in caves, or in the woods, grazing on acorns and other wild fruits. Such laughable childishness! Or even the introduction of âmineâ and âyoursâ and property, almost as if before it did not exist, and everything was common. Or the introduction of coins, and consequently that of the purchase and sale, almost as if before because there was no money (a necessary instrument of such a contract), only barter was in use. Or even that there were some original authors, and introducers of laws, and letters, and sciences, and arts.17
A similar scepticism permeates also De Lucaâs notion of ius gentium, and especially the idea of ius gentium primarium, the law of nations stemming from âa kind of rational instinct among men, and from perennial custom among nationsâ.18 De Luca rejected the proper legal character of such law, especially as far as the law of war was concerned, since it lacked the formal structure of civil litigation with a dedicated judge. Consequently, he considered the law of war â and other aspects of the ius gentium â as a matter of state, regulated by lex politica more than jurisprudence,19 and his Dottor volgare has a rather cynical remark about the vagueness of this body of notions:
And from this it follows that each one figures this law of nations in his own way, and he considers himself very wise at it, hence for the most part it is used as an excuse, or in order to mantle force and oppression by the powerful upon the weak.20
But a commitment to the new âmodernâ vision of natural law could have had far more serious consequences in those days than the simple jokes of De Luca. In 1690 the Inquisition started a trial on a presumptive heretical sect known as âThe Whitesâ (I Bianchi), involving a number of persons in Rome and Milan from different social classes, education and backgrounds, including a few professors of La Sapienza.21 The first informer and accuser, one Francesco Picchitelli, told the Holy Inquisitors that, among other dangerous and blasphemous things, the members of this coterie held that âwe must not believe in anything, except in the law that nature teaches us: do not do to others what you do not like, eat, drink and live happilyâ.22 This charge was accepted in the course of the proceedings â which included torture in some cases â by a few of the defendants. Filippo Alfonsi, poet and librarian, in a clumsy attempt to soften his position, blamed his companions for having âentangled his mindâ with ideas such as âthat we must not believe in any law, not even the Catholic one, all made for political reasons, except the Law of Natureâ.23 And he added that âwhen discussing such matters, they called it philosophizing, and they said they were becoming Philosophersâ, a very interesting remark for the question of how natural law was perceived at that time, namely, not only as a strictly legal subject, but also (and especially) a philosophical one.
Finally, it must also be considered that, apart from the patent general suspicion of cultural innovation, the delay in the reception and discussion of ius naturae et gentium at the Sapienza (compared with other universities such as Pisa)24 was further hindered by its academic competition with the prestigious Jesuit Roman College, where the teaching of more orthodox Scholastic natural law had a strong tradition thanks to the work of its famous former professors Robert Bellarmine, Juan de Mariana and Francisco Suarez.25
Thus, only slowly, at the end of the seventeenth century, the gloomy opinion on and position of natural law and the law of nations at the Sapienza began to change, thanks to a combination of cultural and political causes. On the one hand, it was a question of fighting formalism, dogmatism and the exclusively practical attitude to legal studies, and, on the other hand, of proposing a methodological alternative to the predominant Aristotelian, Scholastic and Jesuit natural law. Given this agenda, it is not surprising that the main innovations at La Sapienza were introduced with a focus on the close ties between philology, philosophy and history in the study of law, and a keen interest in the style and ideas of legal humanism and scuola culta, as well as in the intellectual suggestions coming from the Neapolitan cultural environment of the Investiganti and the works of Giambattista Vico (1668â1744).26 Furthermore, this quest was certainly helped by the reforming action of some popes, and by their attempts â not always completely successful â to rationalize and modernize the general plan of studies within the âofficialâ Roman university. In 1701 Clement XI, an admirer of Gravina, established a special congregation for papal academies, to which Gravina contributed.27 Between 1744 and 1748 Benedict XIV, himself a scholar and an acquaintance of many illustrious men of the Enlightenment, also proposed a reform project for La Sapienza. If the real value of his plan is controversial, it is nevertheless possible to admit that Prospero Lorenzo Lambertini, also as a pope, remained an intellectually curious man and moderately open to novelty.28 It was he, for example, who supported Emmanuele Duni for the chair of the Pandects at the Sapienza. Then, in 1788 Pope Pius VI issued a series of regulations for the University, which partially formalized, as we will see, the teaching of natural law and the law of nations in the Faculty of Philosophy. Finally, in 1824 Leo XII published the decree Quod divina sapientia, addressed to the reform of the Roman university, and providing for the first official chair of âNatural law, public law, and the law of nationsâ, now moved to the Faculty of Law.29
3 Ius naturae et gentium at the Sapienza: The Teaching and the Chair
As said, there was no chair devoted to ânatural lawâ or âlaw of nationsâ at the Sapienza before 1824. In 1812 Giovanni Ferri de Saint-Constant (1755â1830), Rector of the University newly appointed by the Napoleonic government, lamented the absence of a course âdu droit naturel et du droit des gensâ, but remarked that âthe old regulations [of the University] had in a way filled this void by instructing the professor of moral philosophy to teach the elements of natural lawâ.30 Ferri de Saint-Constant provides us with the interesting information that notions of the subject were given not as a part of the curriculum of studies offered by the Faculty of Law (Classe dei leggisti), but within the Faculty, or Classe, of âPhilosophy and Artsâ. In fact, he was referring to the already mentioned regulations of the Sapienza issued by Pope Pius VI in an effort to improve the life and reputation of the institution. The regulations for the Faculty of Philosophy and Arts stated:
The Reader of Ethics, at the first hour of the morning, every year, lectures on the subject and, deriving it from the principles of natural law and the law of nations, truly gives the elements of public law.31
This line shows how ius naturae et gentium and ius publicum were, at that time, clearly intertwined, if not identified one with the other, as already happened in other parts of Europe.32 As a matter of fact, when in 1824 the first official chair for this subject was created in Rome, it was named Diritto di natura, diritto pubblico e delle genti,33 but at that time it was integrated into legal studies, mainly thanks to the earlier action of canon law professor Giovanni Devoti (1744â1820), who had been a pupil of Emmanuele Duni.34 This reflects another important aspect of the history of ius naturae et gentium at the Sapienza, namely the internal fighting between faculties and professors, which was linked to the thorny question of the uncertain nature of this discipline, divided between theory and practice.
Indeed, even if the first official chair of natural law and the law of nations was created in 1824, the sources reveal that in 1788 this area of studies seemed to possess, at least informally, its own autonomy within the moral and legal disciplines. For example, the widely available gazette Notizie per lâAnno 1788 stated that Aurelio Gama of the Order of the Clerics Regular Minor (also known as Adorno Fathers) was appointed the first professor of gius naturale, et delle genti. In 1794 the chair passed to Gamaâs religious brother Giovanni Battista Piccadori (1766â1829), who became General of his Order and counsellor of the Holy Office and Index congregations in Rome.35 His manuscript lectures from 1808, even though formally given as part of the Ethics classes, were titled âlectures on natural law and the law of nations, given at the Sapienza Universityâ. This is confirmed by Filippo Maria Renazziâs celebrated History of the Sapienza, published in four volumes between 1803 and 1806, where Piccadori was mentioned as having succeeded Gama âin teaching the principles of natural law and the law of nationsâ.36 Piccadori held the assignment until 1824, when, as we have seen, the chair was officially named and moved to the Law Faculty under Francesco Norcia (1797âafter 1870), who kept it until 1836.37
So, it cannot be denied that the formalization of ius naturae et gentium within academic teachings in Rome happened at a very late stage. However, to have a full picture of the matter it is essential to look also at the less formal and less explicit reception of Protestant natural law from the very beginning of the eighteenth century up to the regulations of 1788. It is in this period, in fact, that we find the first and most significant signs and sources of this complex process of reaction and readjustment of the natural law tradition, with its now inseparable appendix of the law of nations. And here it is necessary to look, above all, at legal studies, where obviously the concepts of ânatural lawâ and âlaw of nationsâ were discussed within the usual framework of Roman jurisprudence, even if without any great novelty, as we have seen, apart from the exceptional figure of Muret. But new methodologies, new themes and new authors started to show up in Rome after Gian Vincenzo Gravina was called to the chair of the Pandects in 1699.
4 Gian Vincenzo Gravina (1664â1718)
Gravina was born in Calabria, southern Italy.38 He studied under the eminent Italian cartesian Gregorio Caloprese and, in Naples, under the jurist Serafino Biscardi and the professor of Greek, Gregorio Messere. They introduced Gravina to the importance of the study of history and erudition, the cult of the Classics and the predilection for legal humanism and its most important exponents: Alciato, Cujas, Donellus, Hotman. In 1689 Gravina followed Cardinal Francesco Pignatelli to Rome and began to earn a solid reputation for his manners and scholarship. He corresponded with learned men such as Antonio Magliabechi, Friedrich Benedikt Carpzov and Johann Georg Graevius, and quickly found his place in the intellectual world of papal Rome. On good terms with both Innocent XII and his successor, Clement XI, Gravina became professor of civil law at La Sapienza in 1699, and in 1703 he also held the chair of canon law. He died in 1718, just after having accepted a position at the University of Turin by invitation of Vittorio Amedeo II of Savoy.
A man of vast interests and erudition, Gravina is the author of a substantial number of works in different fields. His main achievement in legal studies, the Originum iuris civilis libri tres, appeared in Leipzig in 1708, under the auspices of Johann Burckhard Mencke (1674â1732), director of the well-known periodical Acta eruditorum.39 The book was well received and later praised by Montesquieu and Gibbon, among others.40 In fact, Gravina had been called to Rome by Cardinal Albani (later to become Pope Clement XI) precisely in order to vivify the spectrum of the teaching of law. According to Giovan Battista Passeri (1694â1780), a pupil of Gravina at the Sapienza, it was Albani who proposed Gravinaâs name to the pope, by stressing that âRoman jurisprudence had to be repolished as it had already been done in other nationsâ.41 Another early recognition of the originality of Gravinaâs method comes once again from Renazzi, for whom Gravina
was the first who after the era of Alciatus and Muretus, undertook to treat and illustrate among the Italians â and especially in Rome â Jurisprudence with the lights of Philosophy, with the principles of public law, and with all the necessary Greek and Latin erudition. It is true that he benefited much from the works of many very learned French and German interpreters of Roman Law, unknown in Italy at the time, not only to the crowd of forensic Giureconsulti, but also to public professors in universities. But it is to his great credit to know precisely these authors and to be able to take advantage of them.42
Gravina participated in the reorganization of studies at the Roman university and, animated by a profound anti-Jesuitism, took action to revive the importance of Sapienza vis-aÌ-vis the Roman College. A staunch opponent of probabilism, in his oration De instauratione studiorum Gravina invited his colleagues to refrain from the use of casuistry, âin order not to add further torments to the normal difficulty of legal interpretationâ.43 Gravinaâs approach to the study of law was essentially rational, historical and philological.44 His involvement in the Neapolitan cultural environment, the same one Vico frequented,45 had pushed him to study the juridical dimension of human life from two fundamental points of view: time and space.46 On the one hand, a crucial aspect of his method consisted in the investigation of the actual historical links between natural law and civil law (essentially Roman law), understood as a search for the profound origins of the rules of manâs behaviour.47 On the other hand, Gravina devoted himself early to the definition of the universal character of law and knowledge in general. Indeed, one of his public lectures as professor of the Pandects at the Sapienza addressed precisely â and appropriately enough â the topic of âsapientia universaâ.48 Within this lecture Gravina proposed a view of human history in seven steps, according to the development of sapientia. His desire for innovation in human knowledge is made clear when Gravina rejoiced that philosophy had now become finally free from âAristotelian servitudeâ, finding truth âfrom nature itselfâ (ex ipsa natura) and thanks to the contribution of figures such as Telesius, Patrizi, Bacon, Gassendi, Galilei and Descartes.49
Unfortunately, we do not have the texts of the Gravinaâs lectures at the Sapienza, but we can obtain an adequate picture of his ideas on ius naturae et gentium from his numerous other works, above all from the second book De iure naturali, gentium et XII Tabularum of his masterpiece Originum iuris civilis libri tres (1708), a reconstruction of the genesis of civil law, natural law and the law of nations in ancient times, dedicated to Pope Clement XI. A convinced advocate of the legal humanism of mos gallicus, in the list of his favourite authors, in addition to Donellus, Alciato, Duarenus and the beloved Cuiacius, Gravina also recruited Hugo Grotius.50 It is true that he mentioned the Dutch scholar only twice in his Originum juris civilis,51 but Gravina seems to have been influenced by him precisely on topics of ius gentium, such as the belief in the original common ownership of lands and the freedom of the seas.52 Interestingly, his discussion of the right of war and peace in the Originum proceeds with an inversion, beginning with the right of peace, followed by the right of war.53 He also shared with Grotius a keen interest in ancient Stoicism, usually seen in his system as a fundamental partner to Platonism. But just as modern natural law thinkers used Stoicism in a new way, Gravinaâs Platonism was miles away from âthe pious Platonism of Ficino and the Italian Renaissanceâ, and it did not mean hostility to modernity.54
Gravinaâs attitude to Hobbes is a complex one.55 From the anthropological point of view, on the one hand, Gravina condemned the idea of natural selfishness in humanity, which he attributed to Machiavelli and, well before him, to the Sophists (Hobbes being a mere âemulatorâ).56 On the other hand, he recognized an important but not a decisive role for passions and the âlaw of the bodyâ in the determination of human behaviour. In fact, speaking of a âdouble natural lawâ in human beings, there is also the âlaw of reasonâ to be taken into account. In that sense, reason and passions are both inherent in humanity (as opposed to animals, which possess only instincts), with the former superior to the latter, unfolding progressively from the original state thanks to Godâs Providence.57 Thus, in a sort of blending of Christian Platonism and Christian Stoicism, according to Gravina the goal of the wise man is to find harmony and equilibrium between reason and passions, in a quest for the balance between the particular nature of individuals and the universal nature of Creation.58 From a legal point of view, understanding the relationship between reason and passions appears crucial to Gravina also in order to find the correct interpretation of the different definitions of natural law and ius gentium given by Ulpian and by Gaius in the Corpus iuris civilis.59 Indeed, the idea of âmoderationâ coming from knowledge, reason and wisdom appears to be central to Gravinaâs outlook. Moderation is also the paramount virtue of the sapientes, granting them a natural right to rule over the ignorant (ius sapientioris)60 and providing the main weapon to fight the unavoidable âdiseases of rational natureâ, or vices, described by Gravina in a clear Machiavellian tone.61 From the more political point of view, this ius sapientioris, or aristocracy of virtue, whose outcome should be seen in the laws of a community, means for Gravina that political power cannot and should not be held by all members of the society, thus departing from ideas of popular sovereignty or the natural equality of men as upheld by other figures in the tradition of ius naturae et gentium.62 However, in many of his legal and literary works Gravina also attacked absolutism and tyranny, whose ideas he identified (perhaps too hastily) with Bodin and Grotius.63 Particularly relevant here is Gravinaâs critical remark against the Dutch jurist in his posthumously published De imperio et iurisdictione, since it involves one of Grotiusâs most controversial statements, concerning the possibility of âvoluntary enslavementâ or intentional deprivation of liberty by individuals.64 Generally speaking, Gravina preferred a kind of enlightened monarchy, subject to the rule of law and reason and assisted by wise magistrates and counsellors from the middle class.65
The origin of political community, for Gravina, is still tied to the fundamental concept of family, and its traditional structure. But it is interesting to note that Gravina also puts the family at the beginning of the law of nations, since it is precisely in order to please their needs and acquire what they miss that families, under the guidance of natural reason, search for relationships and exchanges with other families. Hence, the law of nations, defined as âratio illa, quae non uni familiae, sed pluribus regendis est instituta, cumque pluribus gentium communicataâ, derives from basic economic needs, and Gravina can title the relevant chapter of Originum âDe iure Gentium, et Origine Commerciorumâ. Once again, he stresses the importance of âthe law of reasonâ, conceived as the âmotherâ of the law of nations66 and as the guiding light for fostering peace and avoiding wars. The crucial role attributed by Gravina to reason, also in the law of nations, reveals his participation in a major discourse of early modern ius naturae et gentium, that on the legitimacy of wars against the so-called âenemies of mankindâ. Indeed, it is the capability of recognising and following reason that draws a line between men and beasts. Appealing to the Ciceronian notions of âsocietas hominumâ and âcommunis hostis omniumâ,67 usually attributed to pirates and brigands and already used for example by Alberico Gentili and Hugo Grotius,68 Gravina makes clear that âwhoever goes astray from virtue, and unleashes passions from its commands, changing from reason to instincts, is a criminal, and an enemy of human natureâ (hostis humanae naturae).69 The same image is repeated in the chapter on the law of war (âDe jure belliâ), where Gravina states that if a nation violates âthe bond of human societyâ (foedus humanae societatis), then other nations can legitimately wage a just war against those âenemies of mankindâ (hostis humanitatis).70 And so crucial to him is the power of reason over feritas that Gravina does not hesitate to resolutely defend the rule of sapientes over the âbarbariansâ.71
5 Emmanuele Duni (1714â1781)
If Gravinaâs innovative teaching at La Sapienza lasted for about twenty years, his later colleague Emmanuele or Emanuele Duni did even better, holding the chair of the Pandects for almost thirty years, from 1753 until his death in 1781.72 Like Gravina, Duni was born in southern Italy (Matera), and like him he was trained at the great Neapolitan school of law, perhaps attending the last âprivateâ lessons of Giambattista Vico,73 who always remained a crucial figure for Duni, to the point that he was accused of being a mere plagiarist, with little or no originality.74
In recent years, however, attempts have been made to do justice to Duniâs ability as a teacher and to his openness to new ideas and to new readings. He was, indeed, a âpopularizerâ of Vico, but not devoid of a certain dignity of his own.75 According to Achille Gennarelli, Duniâs brother Egidio Romualdo, a musician of some reputation, introduced him to the Parisian erudite circles during a sabbatical Emmanuele spent in France, where he allegedly met even Voltaire. Indeed, Duniâs Origine, e progressi del cittadino e del governo civile di Roma (1763â1764), a careful reconstruction of the social, legal and political development of the Roman Republic,76 was favourably reviewed by the Parisian Gazette litteÌraire de lâEurope and translated into German in 1829 (without acknowledgement of its real author) by Wilhelm von Eisendecher (1803â1880). Other evidence of Duniâs European network is his letter of April 1763 to the English consul in Venice, John Strange, where he praised the British cultural world and lamented the fact that in Rome âthe purity of [legal] doctrine lies buriedâ.77 But perhaps the main contribution to Duniâs notoriety came from two important literary polemics. The first one was linked to his first major work, Saggio sulla giurisprudenza universale (An essay on universal jurisprudence), which appeared in 1759 in the Roman cultural periodical Giornale deâ letterati,78 sponsored by Benedict himself, and it was then published in Rome as a monograph in 1760. The essay was heavily influenced by Vicoâs system. One specific idea, that of the original âferalityâ of the first men, stimulated Vicoâs enemy Bonifacio Finetti (1707â1782), a Dominican and author of the De principiis iuris naturae et gentium adversus hobbesium, pufendorfium, thomasium, wolfium et alios (1764).79 There, Finetti criticized both Duni and his master, Vico, an attack to which Duni replied, generating in turn a long rejoinder from Finetti, the Apologia del genere umano accusato dâessere stato una volta bestia (An apology for humankind, accused of having been once upon a time a beast, 1768). The second debate was tied to Duniâs denunciation of the abbot Louis-Clair Du Bignon (1738â?), whom he had met in Italy in 1765, for plagiarism.80 In the same year Du Bignon published Histoire critique du gouvernement romain in Paris, raising Duniâs (overall unfair)81 accusation of plagiarism â with reference to his Origine e progressi â in an article in the Gazette LitteÌraire, and Du Bignonâs reply. Melchior von Grimm (1723â1807) soon joined the debate in the Correspondance litteÌraire, which he co-edited with Diderot.82 Later in his life Duni refined and updated his Saggio of 1760, giving it a new structure and analysing new authors (such as Thomasius and Wolff), and published it as La Scienza del Costume o sia sistema sul dritto universale (Napoli: stamperia Simoniana, 1775), a systematic work summarizing his reflections on natural jurisprudence.
Since 1753 Duni had won a position at the Sapienza thanks to the support of the pope himself,83 the âenlightenedâ Benedict XIV. As said, Duni kept the crucial chair of Pandette for almost thirty years, so his impact on at least two generations of students should not be underestimated. Duniâs interest in the literature on ius naturae et gentium is already clearly visible in his Saggio sulla giurisprudenza universale, a fair example of what he is likely to have taught his pupils at the Sapienza. As a matter of fact, the final pages of the essay offer one of the first (if not the first) critical review in Italy of another classic of eighteenth-century natural law, Emer de Vattelâs newly published Du droit des gens (1758). But the discussion of Vattel is only the conclusion of a long journey âin the midst of a stormy sea of writings [â¦] for the most part coming from beyond the Alpsâ, as Duni confesses in the dedicatory letter of the volume to the great statesman and man of letters Bernardo Tanucci (1698â1783).84 This journey finally took him into the âharbour of wisdom of the incomparable and (let us say frankly) of the great philosopher, philologist and jurist Giambattista Vicoâ. So, as in Gravina, also in Duni we find an attempt to find a âthird wayâ for approaching the issue of âuniversal jurisprudenceâ (explicitly identified by Duni with ânatural law and the law of nationsâ),85 between the old-fashioned Thomism and the Protestant âinnovatorsâ. The route to follow was clearly the historicist method of Gravina and Vico, based on a philological analysis of the temporal and spatial origins of law.86 Thus, the influence of Vico and Gravina appeared unequivocal in the idea that civil law, as well as the law of nations, cannot be fully understood without recourse to philosophy and philology, as Duni himself confessed to John Strange in the above-mentioned letter of 1763.87 From our perspective, the most interesting part of the essay is the last one, where Duni investigates the relationship between natural law and the law of nations by analysing the works of Grotius, Hobbes, Pufendorf, Selden and Vattel.88 A first important implication is that civil law, while falling within the sphere of utility and âcertaintyâ (il certo), maintains a relationship with the authentic âtruthâ (il vero) of natural law that is based on the common rationality of man, who, even before living in a juridical society, participates in the universal society of reason. Following Vico, Duni argued that the different nations at the time of their foundation autonomously gave themselves a ânatural law of nationsâ (diritto naturale delle genti) which constituted the outcome of the âadditions or deductionsâ of natural law proper. In contrast, according to Duni, Hobbes and the âmost eruditeâ Grotius had denied any connection between natural and civil law, and had instead explained the basic uniformity between the legal systems of the various nations through an a posteriori procedure based on âconsentâ. It was, in Duniâs eyes, an abstract solution, where the authentic foundation of ius gentium should have arisen from a philological investigation. And, as in Vico, the whole formation process of this ânatural law of nationsâ is guaranteed by Divine Providence:
Therefore, where they [the modern interpreters of natural law] place the birth of the law of nations in that small area of civil law that is found to be uniform among them [the nations], I on the contrary claim that the civil law is the son of the law of nations, and not the other way around, as they claimed to establish against all reasonableness, encouraged [lit. flattered] by the ease with which Hobbes was able to get away with it. But they did not realize that Hobbes had in mind to establish an entire system of jurisprudence far from any principle of Divine Providence.89
However, the reference to Providence cannot mask the novelty of a vision that makes the ânatural law of nationsâ both historical and natural at the same time. Duni (as Vico before him) entirely rejects the Hobbesian reduction of the law of nations to natural law. Singularly enough, by the ânatural law of nationsâ he intended a law of nations that was ânaturalâ precisely because it was customary and conventional, evolving from nationsâ concrete and ever-changing needs. Also, in another crucial passage simplified from Vico, Duni claims that, in order to fully understand the development of the ânatural law of nationsâ, one has to study âwith the metaphysical lightsâ the pre-historical period, those times âobscureâ and âfabledâ when men lacked the use of reason and lived like beasts. It follows that natural reason was not originally created in humanity by God, and consequently the principles of natural law were discovered and discernible by individuals and nations only through history, and in different âstagesâ, starting from a âferal stateâ of man (stato ferino).90
It was this claim by Vico and reaffirmed by Duni that attracted Finettiâs criticism. The unorthodox position of Vico and Duni91 is highlighted by the fact that in his Apologia Finetti lists together Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Vico and Duni. Actually, he considers the two Italians even more pernicious than the Genevan, as âRousseau describes his lawless savages in the form of fiction or hypothesis, while Vico and Duni assert that these lawless beasts really and truly existedâ.92 It should be noted that Duniâs Risposta to Finetti, on the theme of the animal behaviour of primordial humans, actually contained an element that was foreign to Vicoâs works, and that could instead be seen in relation to Rousseauâs famous Discours sur lâorigine et les fondements de lâineÌgaliteÌ parmi les hommes (1755). I refer to the comparison between the primordial men and the modern savages of the Indies, which Duni established on the basis of De lâorigine des Lois, des Arts et des Sciences (1758)93 by Antoine Goguet, a âmodern and most eruditeâ writer.94 Anyway, the dispute apparently had a certain echo, as another passage in Finettiâs Apologia points to a very interesting remark about how Duniâs teachings had been received as unusual at the Sapienza in Rome, causing a bitter clash between two parties, the âferalsâ and the âanti-feralsâ (ferini e antiferini):
Duni was joined by a number of his colleagues; but the greater and wiser part of those professors (as far as we have been told from Rome) were truly sickened by the indecent manners he had in such a literary question and consequently were not at all persuaded by his reasons, or rather his cabal and sophisms. So, a kind of war broke out between those scholars, some strongly condemning him, and others defending him with equal commitment: hence they formed like two parties of ferini and antiferini.95
Overall, Duniâs conception of the ius naturae et gentium is the same as that found in other important figures of the Italian Catholic Aufklärung of the time, such as Appiano Buonafede (1716â1793) and Antonio Genovesi (1713â1769).96 The idea was to separate, in the Protestant tradition and in âmodern authorsâ in general, the figures who were too radical and far from orthodoxy (such as Hobbes, Spinoza and HelveÌtius) and those who could be partly âsavedâ for their erudition or for their reasonable intuitions (such as Grotius, Pufendorf, Locke, Montesquieu and Vattel). Indeed, in the preface to La Scienza del Costume Duni shows a positive attitude towards the âillustrious writersâ on ius naturae et gentium, âmassime Oltramontaniâ, who âhave deserved, and will always deserve perpetual praiseâ.97 Duni seems to be particularly sympathetic with Grotius, âa man of supreme qualitiesâ. While the Dutch jurist mistakenly searched for the foundation of the law of nations in universal consent, nevertheless, âbeing the most learned and the most versed of all in erudition, he clearly saw that the foundation of the law of nations could not be the same principle as that of the law of natureâ. Even more, in La Scienza del Costume Duni dared to defend one of Grotiusâs most controversial ideas, namely, that natural law keeps its validity etiamsi daremus non esse Deum, and that, consequently, an atheist could well have access to it. It is true â says Duni â that in the heart of the atheist the observance of the precepts of nature, understood as laws prescribed by God, does not reign, but it is equally true that the atheist, as gifted with intelligence like others, will not be able to escape the knowledge that these regulations âhave a degree of validityâ (aliquem locum haberent) even for the person of the atheist. So Grotius does not contradict himself when he claims that God is the author of natural law, and that the latter can also be known by atheists. Although the atheist does not recognize the force of obligation in the laws of nature, he, too, could not deny with his own reason (coi propri lumi) that such and no other should be the conduct of our actions, namely, that which is dictated to us by our Nature.98
All in all, it seems that the students of the Sapienza found themselves faced with a teacher well prepared and endowed with a certain originality, considering the context of Papal Rome. From a strictly political point of view, too, Duni seems to have had unconventional ideas. Undoubtedly, his Origine e progressi is primarily a work of social and legal history (again in the footsteps of Vico), where we do not find any particular references to or quotations from the canon of modern natural law.99 However, the concepts of ânatureâ and âhuman natureâ find ample space within the volume, where they are used in an eminently political sense. Duni showed with historical expertise the advent of the popular government of ancient Rome through the political struggle for the affirmation of the ânatural ideas of freedom born with man himselfâ, and the âdesire, inspired us by Nature, to free ourselves from the tyranny of othersâ. Political turmoil was the tool through which the Roman populace (plebe) reached full awareness of the ineluctable tension inherent in human nature and started to reflect on âthe pure law of humanity, which does not recognize the reason for inequality between man and manâ.100 It is more than plausible that Duni, in addition to Vico, read Rousseau (as implied by Finetti). Another crucial piece of evidence comes from a passage in La Scienza del Costume where Duni blends Christianity and Enlightenment to attack war, slavery and above all private property as contrary to natural law. The ownership of goods combined with the right to transfer them to others are the causes of the inequality that we see in civil societies. Nature admits only the use of things common to all, not a privative and absolute right of ownership.101
6 Concluding Remarks
Undoubtedly, the process of introducing and receiving Protestant (and generally âupdatedâ) literature on natural law in papal Rome was slow, yet it happened. Focusing on the world of universities,102 we have seen how for about half a century, thanks to personalities such as Gravina and Duni, attempts were made to revive legal studies and critically select the sources and themes of the new modern natural law, between reception and reinterpretation. The primary goal was to find an alternative to the traditional visions â perceived by now as inadequate â both of pedantic medieval law and of Jesuit scholasticism, without of course fully endorsing the Protestants. To do so, Gravina and Duni turned to history and philosophy, taking the quest for the âoriginsâ of human conduct as their main objective. In a way, they brought to Rome the best part of that vital and innovative cultural world that was Naples in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The question we have tried to address is not so much to know when and to what extent the âmodernâ ius naturae et gentium was finally taught in Rome, but rather to demonstrate the efforts of a few, maybe âexceptionalâ figures, to renew a part of jurisprudence in a hostile cultural environment.
Archival Sources
Archivio di Stato di Roma, Rome, Italy, UniversitaÌ di Roma, 88.
Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Rome, Italy, Segreteria di Stato, Interni, 1824.
Archivio Storico della Pontificia UniversitaÌ Gregoriana, Rome, Italy, Curia, FC 273 2.
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Italo Birocchi, âLâinsegnamento del diritto pubblico nelle UniversitaÌ italiane nel XVIII secoloâ, in Science politique et droit public dans les faculteÌs de droit europeÌennes (XIIIeâXVIIIe sieÌcle), ed. Jacques Krynen and Michael Stolleis (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 2008), 549â558; Paolo Alvazzi del Frate, âLa âdeÌcouverteâ du droit constitutionnel. La culture juridique française et les deÌbuts de la science du droit public en Italie aÌ lâeÌpoque reÌvolutionnaireâ, in Modernisme, tradition et acculturation juridique, ed. Bart Coppein, Fred Stevens and Laurent Waelkens (Bruxelles: Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie van België voor Wetenschappen en Kunsten, 2011), 175â180; and the essays by Vittor Ivo Comparato, âIl diritto di natura a Perugia tra la Repubblica romana e lâUnitaÌâ, and by Maria Rosa Di Simone, âLâUnitaÌ dâItalia e lâinsegnamento del diritto pubblico allâUniversitaÌ di Romaâ, Annali di storia delle universitaÌ italiane 18 (2014): 221â242, 301â312.
On the birth of the new discipline see The Law of Nations and Natural Law 1625â1800, ed. Simone Zurbuchen (Leiden: Brill, 2019). Arguably, most of this scholarship has had a limited impact on international work in the field, for linguistic reasons.
Illuministi italiani, vol. 7, Riformatori delle antiche repubbliche, dei ducati, dello Stato pontificio e delle isole, ed. Giuseppe Giarrizzo, Gianfranco Torcellan and Franco Venturi (Milano: Ricciardi, 1965), ixâx.
Take for instance Giuseppe Garibaldi, one of the most celebrated heroes of Italian unification, who defined the Catholic Church as âa contagious and perverse sectâ. See Giuseppe Garibaldi, Edizione nazionale degli scritti di Giuseppe Garibaldi: Epistolario, vol. 6, 1861â1862 (Bologna: Cappelli, 1932), 93.
Marina Caffiero, âRoma nel Settecento tra politica e religione. Dibattito storiografico e nuovi approcciâ, Dimensioni e problemi della ricerca storica 1 (2000): 81â100; Margaret C. Jacob, The Secular Enlightenment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019), 204â206, and especially the several contributions in Filippo Maria Renazzi. UniversitaÌ e cultura a Roma tra Settecento e Ottocento, ed. Maria Rosa Di Simone, Carla Frova and Paolo Alvazzi Del Frate (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2019).
There were two major conflicts in Rome: one between the avvocati concistoriali, the governing body of La Sapienza, and the professors; and the other between Sapienza itself and the still prestigious Jesuit Roman College. See Maria Rosa Di Simone, La âSapienzaâ romana nel Settecento. Organizzazione Universitaria e Insegnamento del Diritto (Roma: Edizioni dellâAteneo, 1980).
Illuministi, xii.
This is the opinion of Hanns Gross, Rome in the Age of Enlightenment: The Post-Tridentine Syndrome and the Ancien Regime (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 243.
Giuliana Adorni, âLâarchivio dello Studium Urbis fra Archivio di Stato di Roma e Archivio Segreto Vaticanoâ, Annali di storia delle universitaÌ italiane 22 (2018): 243â259.
In the Historical Archives of the Pontifical Gregorian University I have located a very well preserved manuscript copy of the lectures on jus naturae et gentium at the Sapienza by Father Giovanni Battista Piccadori (1766â1829) in 1808, when this subject was taught from the chair of ethics: Curia, FC 273 2, fols 1â323, Juris Naturae, ac Gentium Praelectiones, quas in Sapientiae Gymnasio habuit I.B. Piccadori. Anno 1808. For later years, we also have the revised lectures of Francesco Norcia (1797âca. 1870), the first professor of natural law and law of nations since 1824 (this time at the Faculty of Law), published as Iuris naturae et gentium institutiones in usum auditorum adornatae, 2 vols (Roma: Contedini, 1830).
Vincenzo Ferrone, The Intellectual Roots of the Italian Enlightenment: Newtonian Science, Religion, and Politics in the Early Eighteenth Century, trans. Sue Brotherton (Amherst: Humanities Press, 1995, orig. publ. in Italian 1982), 11. On Galiani, besides Ferroneâs many studies, see Koen Stapelbroek, Love, Self-Deceit, and Money: Commerce and Morality in the Early Neapolitan Enlightenment (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), ch. 2, and idem, Commercio, passioni e mercato. Napoli nellâEuropa del Settecento (Milano: FrancoAngeli, 2020), 60â90.
De Luca was very close to popes Alexander VII and Innocent XI, and frequented the Roman academy of Queen Christina of Sweden. He was appointed cardinal in 1681, after more than thirty years of legal practice in all fields of jurisprudence. See Aldo Mazzacane, âGiovan Battista De Lucaâ, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (Roma: Istituto dellâEnciclopedia Italiana, 1990), vol. 38, 340â347.
Francesca Loverci, âGli studi umanistici dal Rinascimento alla Controriformaâ, in Storia della FacoltaÌ di Lettere e Filosofia de La Sapienza, ed. Lidia Capo and Maria Rosa Di Simone (Roma: Viella, 2000), 199â243.
Giovanni Battista De Luca, Il Principe cristiano pratico (Roma: Stamperia della Camera Apostolica, 1680), 207.
Giovanni Battista De Luca, Il dottor volgare, ovvero il compendio di tutta la legge civile, canonica, feudale, e municipale, vol. 6, Dello stile legale (Colonia: Modesto Fenzio, 1740 [1673]), 499; idem, Principe cristiano, 194. On De Lucaâs sceptical conception of natural law and its relationship to other branches of law, see Alessandro Dani, Unâ immagine secentesca del diritto comune. La teoria delle fonti del diritto nel pensiero di Giovanni Battista De Luca (Bologna: Monduzzi, 2008), ch. 1; see also Maria Rosa Di Simone, âDoveri e diritti delle âdameâ nel pensiero di Giovanni Battista De Lucaâ, Historia et ius 15 (2019): 1â22.
Giovanni Battista De Luca, Il cavaliere e la dama (Roma: Dragondelli, 1675), 33.
Dani, Immagine secentesca, 55â56.
Giovanni Battista De Luca, Theatrum veritatis et justitiae (Venetiis: Paulum Balleonium, 1716), vol. 15.1, 115b, at n. 1: âde hoc iure agere non pertinet ad professores fori externi pro iudicio contentioso, cum potius id pertineat ad illam legem, quae politica dicitur, atque huiusmodi violationis judex vel ultor sit potius eventus belli, sive ea maior vis bellica, quae dicitur ultima ratio rerumâ.
De Luca, Dottor volgare, âproemioâ, 61â62.
The proceedings of the trial, now in the Archives of the Holy Office in Rome, have been studied by Vittorio Frajese, Dal libertinismo ai Lumi. Roma 1690âTorino 1727 (Roma: Viella, 2016), 9â41.
Frajese, Dal libertinismo, 13 (quoting from the original manuscript of the trial proceedings): âche non si ha da credere a niente ma alla legge che ci insegna la natura: non fare ad altri quello che non piace a te, mangiare, bevere, e stare allegramenteâ.
Ibid.: âche non si deve credere ad alcuna legge, nemmeno alla Cattolica, fatte tutte per Politica, ma solo alla Legge della Naturaâ.
See Chapter 1 of the present volume, by Emanuele Salerno.
Marina Formica, âIl secolo dei Lumiâ, in Storia della FacoltaÌ di Lettere e Filosofia de La Sapienza, ed. Lidia Capo and Maria Rosa Di Simone (Roma: Viella, 2000), pp. 305â339, at p. 314.
The multiple intellectual exchanges and networks between Rome and Naples in the early eighteenth century have been well analysed by Raffaele Ajello, âCartesianesimo e cultura oltremontana al tempo dellâIstoria civileâ, in Pietro Giannone e il suo tempo, ed. Raffaele Ajello (Napoli: Jovene, 1980), vol. 1, 3â81. For our purpose, see especially Felix Waldmann, âNatural Law and the Chair of Ethics in the University of Naples, 1703â1769â, Modern Intellectual History 19 (2022): 54â80.
Di Simone, La âSapienzaâ romana nel Settecento, 84â91.
Gaetano Greco, Benedetto XIV: Un canone per la Chiesa (Roma: Salerno, 2011); Benedict XIV and the Enlightenment: Art, Science, and Spirituality, ed. Rebecca Messbarger, Christopher M. S. Johns and Philip Gavitt (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017).
Enrico Flaiani, LâUniversitaÌ di Roma dal 1824 al 1852. Docenti, programmi ed esami tra le riforme di Leone XII e quelle di Pio IX (CittaÌ del Vaticano: Archivio Segreto Vaticano, 2012).
Paolo Alvazzi del Frate, Università napoleoniche negli âStati romaniâ. Il rapport di Giovanni Ferri de Saint-Constant sullâistruzione pubblica, 1812 (Rome: Viella, 1995), 151.
Regolamento dellâArchiginnasio romano (Roma: Camera Apostolica, 1788), 42.
Merio Scattola, Dalla virtuÌ alla scienza. La fondazione e la trasformazione della disciplina politica nellâetaÌ moderna (Milano: FrancoAngeli, 2002).
Cf. âMetodo generale di pubblica istruzione ed educazione per lo Stato Pontificioâ, Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Rome, Italy, Segreteria di Stato, Interni, 1824, b.532, 45, fasc.1, published in Flaiani, LâUniversitaÌ di Roma, 101.
Devoti was a member of the special commission appointed by Pope Pius VII in 1816 for the reformation of academic studies in Rome, eventually culminating in the Quod divina sapientia, issued in 1824, by when Devoti had died. For his plea on moving the teaching of natural law and the law of nations to the Faculty of Law, see Nicola Spano, LâUniversitaÌ di Roma (Roma: Mediterranea, 1935), 69. Members of this commission included cardinals Ercole Consalvi and Bartolomeo Pacca, both very interested in modern natural law. For their use of Vattel even in legal practice, see Elisabetta Fiocchi Malaspina, Lâeterno ritorno del Droit des gens di Emer de Vattel (secc. XVIIIâXIX). Lâimpatto sulla cultura giuridica in prospettiva globale (Frankfurt am Main: Max Planck Institute for European Legal History, 2017), 152â157.
Philippe Boutry, Souverain et pontife: Recherches prosopographiques sur la Curie Romaine aÌ lâaÌge de la Restauration 1814â1846 (Roma: Publications de lâEÌcole française de Rome, 2002), 467. Open access: http://books.openedition.org/efr/1860 (accessed 11 May 2021).
Filippo Maria Renazzi, Storia dellâUniversitaÌ degli Studi di Roma detta comunemente la Sapienza (Roma: Pagliarini, 1803â1806), vol. 4, 422. Renazzi (1745â1808) taught criminal law at the Sapienza for many years. His Elementa juris criminalis (1773) shows a wide use of authors from the tradition of ius naturae et gentium. See Gigliola di Renzo Villata, âAlle origini degli âElementaâ: quali i âsemina castae, veraeque criminalis scientiaeâ?â, in Filippo Maria Renazzi, 136â138.
Flaiani, LâUniversitaÌ di Roma, 44, n. 76.
On Gravina, see especially Carlo Ghisalberti, Gian Vincenzo Gravina giurista e storico (Milano: GiuffreÌ, 1962); Amedeo Quondam, Cultura e ideologia di Gianvincenzo Gravina (Milano: Mursia, 1968); Di Simone, La âSapienzaâ romana nel Settecento, 84â91; Carla San Mauro, âGian Vincenzo Gravinaâ, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (Roma: Istituto dellâenciclopedia italiana, 2002), vol. 58, 756â764; Fabrizio Lomonaco, Filosofia, diritto e storia in Gianvincenzo Gravina (Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2006); Carla San Mauro, Gianvincenzo Gravina giurista e politico (Milano: FrancoAngeli, 2006); Enrico Zucchi, âTirannide e stato di natura. Sul rifiuto dellâassolutismo giusnaturalista nelle Tragedie Cinque di Gian Vincenzo Gravinaâ, in Prima e dopo il Leviatano, ed. Merio Scattola and Paolo Scotton (Padova: Cleup, 2014), 193â226; Gaetano Antonio Gualtieri, Gian Vincenzo Gravina tra estetica, etica e diritto. Dialoghi, discorsi, trattati (Venezia: Marsilio, 2021).
Fabrizio Lomonaco, Il commercio delle idee. Contributi allo studio dei periodici europei del Sei-Settecento (Milano: FrancoAngeli, 2021), 33â82. I quote from the 1713 Naples edition in three volumes, edited by Fabrizio Lomonaco in 2004 as Gianvincenzo Gravina, Originum juris civilis libri tres, ed. Fabrizio Lomonaco, foreword by Fulvio Tessitore, 3 vols (Napoli: Liguori, 2004).
On the immediate fortune of the Originum, see Lomonaco, Filosofia, diritto e storia, 199â229. On Gravina and Montesquieu (with reference to Esprit des lois, vol. 1, 3), see Ghisalberti, Gian Vincenzo Gravina, 4â5; on Gibbon and Gravina, see Giuseppe Giarrizzo, Edward Gibbon e la cultura europea del Settecento (Napoli: Istituto Italiano di Studi Storici, 1954), 195â196.
Giovan Battista Passeri, Vita di Gianvincenzo Gravina, in Gravina, Opere scelte (Firenze: Batelli, 1926).
Renazzi, Storia dellâUniversitaÌ degli Studi di Roma, vol. 4, 81.
Gian Vincenzo Gravina, Oratio de instauratione studiorum, in Scritti critici e teorici, ed. Amedeo Quondam (Bari: Laterza, 1973), 356.
Vincenzo Ferrone, The Politics of Enlightenment: Constitutionalism, Republicanism, and the Rights of Man in Gaetano Filangieri, trans. Sophus A. Reinert (London: Anthem Press, 2012), 72â73. According to Ferrone, Gravina âdeserves credit for having launched a new tradition of political studies based on the historical and more generally philosophical analysis of the existing nexuses of politics and lawâ, 72.
But Fabrizio Lomonaco has rightly stressed the need to study Gravina in his own right, without the recurring temptation to see him only as a possible forerunner of Vico. See Lomonaco, Filosofia, diritto e storia, 3â5.
Fabrizio Lomonaco, Le Orationes di G. Gravina: scienza, sapienza e diritto (Napoli: La cittaÌ del Sole, 1997), 10â11.
Ghisalberti, Gian Vincenzo Gravina, 18â19. Gravinaâs interest in the historical analysis of law is already visible in his Specimen prisci iuris (in Opuscula: 1696) and De ortu et progressu iuris civilis liber, qui est Originum primus (Napoli, 1701). But of course the search for the âoriginsâ of justice and jurisprudence constitutes the key aspect (reflected in the title itself) of Gravinaâs masterwork Originum juris civilis libri tres (Leipzig, 1708, translated into French in 1766).
Gian Vincenzo Gravina, In auspicatione studiorum de sapientia universa, published in the Orationes (Napoli: 1712). As we will see, the concept of âuniversal jurisprudenceâ or giurisprudenza universale also features at the centre of Emmanuele Duniâs works.
Gravina, Oratio de instauratione studiorum, 381: âAt philosophia ex aristotelica servitute manumissa, scientiam initio per Telesium potissimum et Patricium et Ficinum in Platone, aliisque graecis philosophis venabatur; iampridem vero a Bacone, Gassendo, Galilaeo, Cartesio, ex humanae mentis angustiis ad rerum universitatem traducta, causarum veritatem haurit ex ipsa naturaâ. However, the rejection of Aristotelianism and the focus on natural philosophy does not imply, for Gravina, the complete adherence to radical forms of metaphysics or atheism. See Lomonaco, Le Orationes, 19â20.
Gian Vincenzo Gravina, De conversione doctrinarum (1694), in Scritti critici e teorici, 148. Adriana Luna-Fabritius, âProvidence and Uses of Grotian Strategies in Neapolitan Political Thought, 1650â1750â, in Sacred Polities, Natural Law and the Law of Nations in the 16thâ17th Centuries, ed. Hans W. Blom (Leiden: Brill, 2022), 314â342, at 331, states that Gravina âwas one of the most important readers of Grotius in this periodâ.
Guido FassoÌ, Vico e Grozio (Napoli: Guida, 1971), 19â20. See Gravina, Originum, vol. 2, 15, p. 223, with reference to Grotius, De iure belli ac pacis, III.15.1â2, on the ius post bellum and the law of victory.
Gravina, Originum, vol. 2, 10, pp. 165â166.
Ibid., II, 13â14, pp. 220â221. According to Gravina, the rules of peace logically come before those of war, because his Platonic and Christian anthropology envisages war only as a violation of the provisions of reasonable sociability and peaceful commerce.
Jonathan Israel, Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy, Modernity, and the Emancipation of Man. 1670â1752 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 525.
See the remarks by Lomonaco in the introduction to Gravina, Originum, xxxiâxxxiv. For Gravinaâs constitutionalism as opposed to Hobbesian absolutism, see Zucchi, âTirannide e stato di naturaâ.
Gravina, Oratio de instauratione studiorum, 355. He also attacked Hobbesâs defence of matriarchal society (De Cive, IX, 3) in Originum, II, 10, 165.
Gravina, Originum, II, 2â4, 157â159. It must be said that Gravina, apart from a single reference to Providence, aptly eschews all thorny theological problems in his work, keeping it as much as possible at the legal, historical and philosophical level. A reason for that might have been his at least partially unorthodox views on sacred history, ancient wisdom and natural philosophy. See Frajese, Dal libertinismo ai Lumi, 91â132.
See Gravina, Originum, II, 4, 160: âHence the Stoics said that to live according to nature is a virtue transmitted to us by the law of reason, by which the particular nature of men is reconciled with the universal nature of all thingsâ (Hinc vivere secundum naturam, ipsam Stoici dixerunt, esse virtutem traditam nobis ab lege rationis, qua peculiaris hominum, et rerum universa natura conciliantur).
Digest 1.1.1.3â4 (Ulpian) and Digest 1.1.9 (Gaius), discussed â without explicit acknowledgement â in Gravina, Originum, II, 1, 155â156.
Gravina, Originum, II, 17, 224â225.
See ibid., II, 7, 162â163, for the description of the chasm between the infinite generation of desires and the impossibility of manâs contentment without recourse to reason and wisdom, echoing Machiavelliâs âmala contentezzaâ in Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio, vol. 1, 37.
See San Mauro, Gianvincenzo Gravina, 90â94; Zucchi, âTirannide e stato di naturaâ, 214.
Gian Vincenzo Gravina, De imperio et iurisdictione (Catania: Giannotta, 1907), 23â33. Whether Bodin and Grotius can be called âabsolutistsâ, and whether they were considered as such by their contemporaries, are still debated questions. Useful remarks are made in Daniel Lee, Popular Sovereignty in Early Modern Constitutional Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), chs 6 and 8.
Gravina, De imperio et iurisdictione, 23: âHomines enim liberi, quorum non est commercium, transire nequunt in proprietatem imperantis, unde non possunt venire nisi sub potestate, atque ex voluntate propriaâ. See Grotius, De iure belli ac pacis, I.3.8.1. Gravinaâs work was written in 1743, but published only in 1907.
San Mauro, Gianvincenzo Gravina, 81â104.
Gravina, Originum, II, 14, 221: ârationis lex, quae mater est juris gentiumâ.
Cicero, De Officiis, I.50 and III.107.
See Walter Rech, Enemies of Mankind: Vattelâs Theory of Collective Security (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 54â70.
Gravina, Originum, II, 9, 165.
Ibid., II, 14, 221.
Ibid., II, 15, 223, in a discussion on the justness of Roman conquests, squeezed between two quotations from Grotius (De iure belli ac pacis, III.15.1 and III.15.11.12). Gravina strongly defends the justice of Roman wars, only directed â in his opinion â against âbarbariansâ, and always following âhumanityâ. The issue had been debated at least since Alberico Gentiliâs De armis romanis (1599).
Mauro Di Lisa, âDuni Emmanuleâ, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (Roma: Istituto dellâEnciclopedia Italiana, 1993), vol. 42, 19â26; Max Ascoli, Saggi vichiani, vol. 1, La filosofia giuridica di Emmanuele Duni (Roma: Garroni, 1928); Maria Guercio, âE. Duni storico del dirittoâ, Archivio della societaÌ romana di Storia Patria 98 (1974): 147â173. See also the introduction to the eighteenth-century edition of Duniâs complete works by Achille Gennarelli, âNotizie di Emmanuele Duniâ, in Opere complete di Emmanuele Duni (Roma: Tipografia Camerale, 1845), vol. 1, iâxxiii; Renazzi, Storia dellâUniversitaÌ di Roma, 253. To my knowledge, the most up-to-date study of Duni is in Giovanni Scarpato, Giambattista Vico dallâetaÌ delle riforme alla Restaurazione. La Scienza nuova tra Lumi e cultura cattolica, 1744â1827 (Roma: Aracne, 2018), 69â126.
The question is debated: Di Lisa rejects that possibility, while Scarpato seems to think it plausible, considering that Antonio Genovesi also attended Vicoâs private academy from 1736.
Benedetto Croce, Bibliografia Vichiana, accresciuta e rielaborata a cura di Fausto Nicolini (Napoli: Ricciardi, 1947), 268â269.
As already avowed by Di Simone, La âSapienzaâ romana, 197â202. See also Fabrizio Lomonaco, Tracce di Vico nella polemica sulle origini delle pandette e delle XII tavole nel Settecento italiano (Napoli: Liguori, 2005), 37â40.
Benedetto Staij, the ecclesiastical censor who gave the imprimatur to Duniâs work, judged the book as âvery usefulâ, and admired the ânew lightsâ (nuovi lumi) used by the author to clarify the sometimes complex vicissitudes of Roman society. See Alberto Tinto, âGiovanni Komarek tipografo a Roma nei secoli XVIIâXVIII e i suoi campionari di caratteriâ, La Bibliofilia 75 (1973): 189â225.
See Franco Venturi, âElementi e tentativi di riforma nello stato pontificio del Settecentoâ, Rivista Storica Italiana 4 (1963): 778â817.
Giornale deâ letterati per gli anni MDCCLVIII, e MDCCLIX, art. XXI, 305â359.
The volume was published under the name of Finettiâs brother, Giovanni Francesco, and dedicated to Maria Theresa of Austria. On Finetti, see Merio Scattola, âProtestantesimo e diritto naturale cattolico nel XVIII secoloâ, in Illuminismo e protestantesimo, ed. Giulia Cantarutti and Stefano Ferrari (Milano: FrancoAngeli, 2010), 131â148; and see also Chapter 6, by Serena Luzzi, in the present volume.
Mouza Raskolnikoff, âVico, lâhistoire romaine et les eÌrudits français des LumieÌresâ, MeÌlanges de lâeÌcole française de Rome 96 (1984): 1051â1077.
See Scarpato, Giambattista Vico, 105â118.
Franco Venturi, LâantichitaÌ svelata e lâidea del progresso in N. A. Boulanger, 1722â1759 (Bari: Laterza, 1947), 153.
Or, better, by the âprecise commandâ of His Holiness (ordine espresso): see Archivio di Stato di Roma, Rome, Italy, UniversitaÌ di Roma, 88, fol. 245v.
Emmanuele Duni, Saggio sulla giurisprudenza universale, in Opere complete di Emmanuele Duni, vol. 3, 4.
Ibid., 10.
For an attempt to look at Vico in the light of the recent historiography on ius naturae et gentium, see Walter Rech, âHistory and Normativity: Vicoâs âNatural Law of Nationsââ, Journal of the History of International Law 17 (2015): 147â169.
Quoted in Venturi, âElementi e tentativi di riformaâ, 791: âThe laws and customs of men, and consequently of all nations, cannot be dealt without having recourse to the light of philosophy, nor will we ever know how to point out their origin and nature without the help of philosophy, which is the mother of every human understandingâ (Le leggi, ed i costumi degli uomini, ed in conseguenza delle nazioni tutte, non si possono trattare senza ricorrere ai lumi filosofici, neÌ mai sapremo additarne la loro origine, indole e natura senza lâaiuto della filosofia châeÌ la madre dâogni umano intendimento).
Duni is not explicit about the editions he used to quote these authors. He cites a long passage in Latin from Hobbesâs De Cive and refers to Pufendorfâs De iure naturae et gentium in French (undoubtedly from the translation of Jean Barbeyrac). He quotes Grotius frequently, but only once with a precise reference to his De iure belli ac pacis in Latin. As to Vattel, Duni puts the title Du droit des gens only in a footnote, while discussing a few arguments from the book.
Duni, Saggio sulla giurisprudenza universale, 35â36.
Ibid., 42â43.
See Pierre Girard, âLes conditions de lâanthropologie politique chez Vico et Genovesiâ, in Polis e Polemos. Giambattista Vico e il pensiero politico, ed. Gennaro Maria Barbuto and Giovanni Scarpato (Milano: Mimesis, 2022), 247â249.
[Bonifacio Finetti], Apologia del genere umano accusato dâessere stato una volta bestia, in cui si dimostra la falsitaÌ dello stato Ferino degli antichi uomini colla Sacra Scrittura (Venezia: Radici, 1768), 86: âE si noti che Rousseau dipinge i suoi selvaggi senza legge in foggia di finzione o sia dâipotesi; mentre Vico e Duni ammettono come stati veramente e realmente al mondo i bestioni esleggiâ.
An Italian translation appeared in Naples in 1762. See Scarpato, Giambattista Vico, 76â77.
Emmanuele Duni, Risposta ai dubbi proposti dal signor Gianfrancesco Finetti sopra il Saggio sulla giurisprudenza universale di Emmanuele Duni (Roma: Amidei, 1766), in Opere complete di Emmanuele Duni, vol. 3, 48.
Finetti, Apologia, 4: âA Duni si sono uniti alquanti dei suoi colleghi; ma la maggiore e piuÌ saggia parte di quei professori (per quanto ci eÌ stato riferito da Roma), siccome sono restati sommamente nauseati dallâindecente maniera da lui tenuta in una quistione letteraria, cosÄ±Ì non sono restati punto persuasi dalle sue ragioni, o piuttosto cabale e sofismi. Quindi sâeÌ accesa una spezie di guerra tra quegli eruditi, alcuni condannandolo fortemente, ed altri difendendolo con eguale impegno: onde si son formati come due partiti di ferini e antiferiniâ.
Elisabetta Fiocchi Malaspina, Lâeterno ritorno del Droit des gens; Alberto Clerici, âVattel in the Papal States. The Law of Nations and Anti-Prussian Propaganda in Italy at the Time of the Seven Yearsâ Warâ, in The Legacy of Vattelâs Droit Des Gens, ed. Koen Stapelbroek and Antonio Trampus (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2019), 207â234; Adriana Luna-Fabritius, âPufendorfâs Sociability in (Italian) Translationâ, in Passions, Politics and the Limits of Society, ed. Heikki Haara, Koen Stapelbroek and Mikko Immanen (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020), 235â258.
Duni, La Scienza del Costume, 10â12.
Ibid., 20.
The sources used by Duni are mainly taken from Roman history. The literary model, starting from the title itself, appears to be Gravinaâs Originum.
Emmanuele Duni, Origine e progressi del cittadino e del governo civile di Roma (Roma: Bizzarrini Komarek, 1763â1764). I quote from Opere complete di Emmanuele Duni, vols 1 and 2, 24, 102, 106.
Duni, La Scienza del Costume, 202: âNon si puoÌ negare, che fin dalla piuÌ remota antichitaÌ gli uomini abbiano introdotto molti costumi, che per niun conto possono riferirsi al dritto mero Naturale, come le guerre, la schiavituÌ, le manumisioni, e sopra tutto il dominio privativo, o sia la proprietaÌ dei beni unita al dritto di trasferirgli ad altri, che poi ha cagionato quellâineguaglianza, che scorgiamo nelle SocietaÌ Civili. La Natura non ammette che il puro uso delle cose comune a tutti, e non un dritto privativo, ed assoluto di proprietaÌâ.
There is a need for more comprehensive research on ius naturae et gentium in Rome, based also on the study of academies, cafes, periodicals, correspondence, as well as arts and sciences.