Legal Humanism: Italy

Humanistic jurisprudence was less intense in Italy than in France. After Francesco Petrarca (1304-74), whose groundbreaking and orig­inal thought long preceded the new trends, no significant breach was opened in the traditional method.

The scholarly humanism so powerfully represented by such major figures as Flavio Biondo (1392-1463) and Lorenzo Valla (1407-57) had little effect on jurisprudence; nor was it much influenced by the new historiography inaugurated by the genius of Niccold Machiavelli (1469-1527)—who wrote not only IlPhncipe but also theDiscorsisopra Iaphma Deca di Tito Livio and the Istohefiorentine—and continued by an entire school of Florentine historians, notably by Francesco Guicciardini (1483-1540) in his Storia dTtalia.

Legal humanism made sporadic appearances in Milan, Florence, Siena, Bologna, Padua, and Naples. The movement was hesitant, however, and the works it produced were often wishful thinking, than actual projects, as in Bologna with Ludovico Bolognini (1446- 1508).^[227]

Otherjurists allowed themselves to be absorbed into the mechanics of a princely patronage that was particularly generous toward schol­ars and men of letters. In Florence and Milan, for instance, humanism and humanists in league with the governing powers served to project and give cultural expression to the policies of centralization of the emergent sipnohe (the Medici family in Florence; the Sforzas in Mi­lan), whose interest lay in dividing and disbanding the compact and powerful jurist class.

There were few “humanists” among the Italian jurists. Aside from Bolognini, we can count Ludovico Pontano (d. 1439) in Rome, Fe­lino Sandeo (1444—1503) in Lucca, Matteo Gribaldi (d. 1564) in Pied­mont, Lelio Torelli (1489-1576) in Fano,^[228] Mariano Sozzini or Socini (1397—1467) in Siena,^[229] and in Naples Alessandro d’Alessandro (1461- 1523) and Marino Freccia (1531-1603).

One jurist, Andrea Alciato (1492-1550), is considered the major representative of the humanistic school of Italian jurisprudence. In his work, which is impressive for both its mass and its quality (Com­mentaria ad Pandectas, Paradoxa, Parerga, De re militari, Emblemata, and more), Alciato by and large maintained a balance between de­mands for renewing and refashioning the law and acceptance of the weighty legacy of Italian legal doctrine of the thirteenth and particu­larly the fourteenth centuries.

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