RICERCA ITALIANA     

Juridical science, legislation and books production (especially concerning the XVIth- XIXth centuries).

Università degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza"

Abstract

The object of this research is an inquiry upon the issue and circulation of legal books in Italy relating to both the increasing concern about collecting prescriptive sources and the teaching methods in the years between the Modern Age and the establishment of a Unitary State.
In that period, it is well known, the prescriptive systems, notwithstanding their common roots, were going to diversify themselves to suit the jurisprudence and the legislation of the single different countries; in this perspective, strictly associated to the balance of the various regulations , we can rely on a multiform production, which was sometimes depending only on the sovereign's will (lex, edictum, pragmatica), sometimes, instead, resulting from the concurrent intervention by the Parliament.
Thence, being basic premise a comparative horizon, the need of a deep analysis within the numerous different regulations.
A particular branch of this analysis will focus on the situation of Sicily, in the crucial phase included between Mario Muta and Mario Cutelli's work ( first half of the XVIIth century) and the Constitution of 1812.
The analysis will be chiefly centred upon the doctrinal studies about the mechanisms (either unilateral or agreed upon) of the birth of the prescriptive act, upon the institutions sharing in its birth, and upon the various interpretations given to the Constitution of the Kingdom.
As to the specific area of the Kingdom of Sardinia, the >>>

Principal Investigator

Italo BIROCCHI Universita' degli Studi di ROMA

Research Objectives

The purpose of this project of research is to mark a relationship between the law book and the aim of its output and use. In order to reach such a scope -or, at least, to set hand to it- a chronological and geographical restraint is an obvious necessity; from this point of view, themes have been singled out with regard to real lack of historiographic knowledge, suitably arranged with scholars' sphere of competence, i.e. the specific fields of research of those scholars, involved in this project.
In particular, the inquiry tend to focus on a period which covers the whole modern age, till the advent of unitarian State in Italy ; therefore, it deals with Italian juridical and political problems. This choice is not due, of course, to a sort of complete ‘nationalistic closure' -indeed, everybody knows that law books did in modern age have a wide diffusion through Europe, even in translation, despite the growth of national State in 19th century -but to practical reasons. Any enlarging to other European countries would have requested the help of many scholars abroad, making the length of work too long; the object of this study would have been more complex and, no doubt, more ambitious than it is, but for such a scope special programs of financing exist in several European centres of research, especially of UE. On the other hand, reference to Italian political and juridical problems is itself too wide, for a proper scientific inquiry, then a delimitation has become >>>

First Results

The three local units have at their disposal, in the respective locations, the main existing bibliography and most of the published sources, on which they have a prolonged study experience. Moreover, they work in close integration, following a habit consistently experimented over time. Also taking into consideration the relatively brief duration of the research (two years), a clear-cut division between a first phase for the materials collection and a second one for the production of the results arising from the analysis has not been foreseen.

It is to be understood, though, that the above general statement cannot be extended to the part of research concerning the archivist sources, which for their distinctive features (dispersion, at times uncertainty and difficulty to be traced, availability conditioned to the conservation's requirements, etc.) demand the programming of missions in various cities and assume a usually longer acquisition time (including both their study and the necessary checks).

In general, therefore, from the investigation work are expected partial results already in the course of the first year of activity. Such partial results should not be intended as provisional, but as conclusions relative to autonomous sectors and research objectives.

In practice such results will realise a part of the overall proposed programme's finalities that include the following:
-Drafting of monographies and essays;
>>>

Timescale

24 months

National and international background

The theme will be therefore set on a double frame of reference: a) one related to the role of the law as connected to the other legal sources and also to the spreading of printed collections of laws, which can not be automatically labelled as real laws; b) another one linked to the role of the teaching for the jurists' forming0.
These two views have been long analyzed quite generically.
Actually, in the past, the prevailing theory was that of a centralizing state potentially absorbing the whole legislative power; in this prospective, the issuing of legal collections was looked to as an appropriate tool to exalt the function of the sovereign and to urge clarity in the field of regulations.
As a matter of fact, it is acknowledged that the modern state is not at all a machinery that gained stability by sweeping away any intermediate body neither has it any political monopoly; it looks rather as "place of mediation and organization by different forces"(Chittolini); "an uneven state characterized by pluralism" in which "differently shaped institutions actually co-exist" (Mannori and Oestreich).
The classes, the guilds, the communities were neither just diaphragms placed between the individuals and the state, nor potential obstacles to the process of centralization (Gerhard); they were, instead, inner components of a larger whole, inside which civil life developed and were chiefly forces sharing the exercise of power.
This explains the claim >>>