ALBERICUS GENTILIS.*
(Oust readers may recollect that recently an attempt was made to raise some memorial to Albericus Gentilis, the celebrated jurist. Many lawyers, English and foreign, thought that it was seemly to do something to honour the memory of a jurist whose worth has only in recent years been fully appreciated. A monument to him was erected in St. Helen's Church, Bishopsgate Street, where he and his father are buried; and it was also decided to publish a new edition of Gentilis's chief work, his Commentaries on the laws -of war, which had sunk into undeserved oblivion. They have accordingly been edited by Professor Holland, and as printed, they are a beautiful typographical work. The editor has prefixed -a brief account in Latin of Gentilis's life. He has also done for the Commentaries what Barbeyrac laboriously did for Grotius,— gone over all the many citations from ancient literature, verified them, and stated whence they are derived. He has also taken the trouble to compose an index of the many authorities referred to. This implies much labour, the more creditable because not likely to be appreciated by every reader. And yet we cannot say that Professor Holland has done all for his author that we expect at the hands of a benevolent modern editor. He found the memory of Gen- tilis uncared for and neglected, honoured only with an occasional reference from Wheaton and other historians of international law, or a passing remark from such erudite bibliographers as Mohl, to the effect that he was the anticipator of many of Grotius's ideas. Professor Holland has imitated the Good Samaritan, but only in part,—indeed, the oil and twopence seem wanting. It was not true, and complete hospitality to clothe the De Jure Belli in sumptuous binding, to prefix to it a short, dry, Latin preface, written in the curt style of a scholiast, and to turn it on the world with no better introduction. Perhaps it is the use of Latin which cramps the editorial hand and begets a love of com- mon-place, but it is certainly the fact that the' preface is a little too sapless, that it says next to nothing of the man, and that it gives the reader no insight as to the real place of Gentilis in the history of jurisprudence. Had Professor Holland prefixed the very interesting lecture which he gave at Oxford on the subject
Gentilis, his readers would have been thankful ; but they are not likely to be quite satisfied with the few pages, valuable though they are, which form a mere skeleton life, and which do not do justice to Professor Holland's researches. He ought at least to have done as much for his author as Dr. Whewell did for Grotius.
Rightly told, the career of Gentilis is not uninteresting, and Mr. Holland, who has spared no pains in his investiga-
* Alberici °entitle, LC.D., LC. Pro.fessoris Regal, Be lure Belli. Ube Tree. _EMU Thomas Erskine Rolland. Oxonii : E Typographeo Clarendoniano. tions, and who has actually discovered some hitherto un- known facts with respect to him, was just the person to perform this service. Gentilis was the eldest son of a learned physician of Castello di San Genesio, in the March of Ancona. The father seems to have been a man far before his time—ornatissimus medicus, as his son calls him— though he did write a treatise on the question whether demons are the causes of diseases. Ile became a convert to the Reform doctrines, which were then making their way into Italy. He fell under the suspicion of the Inquisition ; and it was necessary to flee for refuge to Carniola, where for a time, as his son gratefully mentions in his Commentaries, the new faith was protected. Indeed the family of Gentilis seems to have been much drawn to Protestantism ; in the " Scaligerana," we read that one of that name was burnt for heresy at Basle in the sixteenth century. Mathew Gentilis urged his wife to fly with him to Carniola, but she refused to do so, on grounds which are unique, we should think, in the history of matrimonial differences :— " I not only permit, but bid you go, for I see your danger. As to accompanying you, pardon me when I say I cannot do it. I am accustomed to the air, the food, and the religion of my native land. If you take me hence, you take me to death. Recom- pense my self-denial in letting you go, by consenting to my stay- ing behind. We shall be as devoted to one another in our separation as we have ever been. Take Albericus with you, but leave the younger children with me." So Mathew Gentilis fled to Carniola, with his eldest son Albericus ; and by a stratagem he managed also to take his youngest son, Scipio—destined one day to be a great light at the University of Altdorf—with him. Soon, however, be had again to choose between banishment and apostacy, and he chose the former, passing by way of Germany into England, where he died.
His eldest son had studied the Civil Law at Perugia, then a famous University, where Bartolus and Baldus had taught, and where the light which they had kindled had not yet expired. He had inhaled the enthusiasm for Roman law which had glowed in Italy for two or three centuries, and which made every foreigner who studied it return to speak its praises and spread its influence. Gentilis's University was the centre of that study, and when he set out on his travels, he was equipped as few of his day were with a know- ledge of the Civil Law. Ile was well received in Germany, where his countrymen were engaged in modifying the old Teutonic law, and recasting it in Roman moulds; but he bent his steps towards England. This might not have seemed a prudent step,—the decision of his brother Scipio to remain in Germany may have appeared more sensible. The Civil Law was not in much repute in England, where it was supposed, in Elizabeth's time, to be related to Popery. It has always per- meated into native jurisprudence through the Canon Law, and the requisite channel was wanting here. Few, in fact, studied Roman Law. When, at a later date, Ritterhusius wanted to secure the copyright of an edition of the Novelle, Casaubon told him his pains were needless ; no one cared for such books,— " the only reading which flourishes here is theology." But Gentilis must have had winning ways, which made him powerful friends. He had the good-luck to become acquainted with Sir Philip Sidney and Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. The latter, who was then Chancellor of the University of Oxford, sent com- mendatory letters to the Vice-Chancellor, the Doctors and Proctors and Heads of Houses in the University, desiring them to admit Gentilis, because "he is a stranger and learned, and an exile for religion." He became a reader in Civil Law. He must have been highly esteemed, for his opinion as a jurist was taken on the question what should be done to Mendoza, the Spanish Ambassador, when his complicity in the Throgmorton conspiracy was established ; and his opinion in favour of banishment, as against death, was acted upon,—a not unimportant episode, which, by the way, Mr. Froude has omitted to mention in his dramatic and minnte account of the conspiracy. Perhaps, partly in consequence of the services which he then ren- dered, he was appointed Professor of Civil Law at Oxford. He threw himself into the intellectual life of the place. He delivered orations on the occasions when degrees were granted, he took part in disputations, and he was indefatigable as an author, entering into all the legal and theological controversies of his time. Professor Holland tells us—though we know of only one vague authority for the statement—that Gentilis spent much time in practising in the Admiralty Court. All his works have not been published ; some fifteen volumes, forming part of the D'Orville collection, are preserved in the Bodleian. Probably Professor Holland is the only person who has examined them, and his report is that the collection is a farrago jurisprudentize. Four or five different treatises, half-finished, are mingled higgledy- piggledy. Gentilis urged his brother Scipio to burn all his unpublished writings except De Advocatitme Ilispanica, and it would seem that he judged accurately their worth. We fail to get much notion of the man himself from his writings. It is clear that he was a laborious and enthusiastic scholar, with a profound belief in the dignity of his calling ; that in had wide interests, extending to theology and politics ; that be brought with him to free England some of the political ideas of a countryman of Machiavelli ; and that he was supple and astute, and full of worldly wisdom. We may glean from his works some little facts about his mode of study,—his habit, for example, of noting down in writing anything worthy of record respecting his subjects which he happens to hear in conversation. His book on the interpretation of law informs Us of his aversion to the mingling of the flowers of literature with jurisprudence, his belief that a civilian need not meddle with Greek, and his dislike to those jurists whose works are little more than historical cata- logues. We may surmise that he was a believer in the benefits of limited monarchy, though he actually wrote a tract to prove that the English Constitution is an absolute monarchy, and that " quod Principi placuit legis habet vigorem " is true of England. But no clear idea of the man himself emerges from his pages,—he, like so many other of the wandering, cosmopolitan scholars of his age, literary soldiers of fortune, whose arms were their mastery of Latin and knowledge of the Digest and its Com- mentators, is but a dim speck in history. We read the curt biographies of him with the feeling that the half, and the more interesting half, remains untold. We scarcely know any writer of eminence save Savigny who has at all done justice to that rare band of philosophical jurists who rose in the fifteenth and six- teenth century to renew the intellectual conquests of Rome. One of them—not the greatest, assuredly—is Albericus Gentilis, and it is to be regretted that no adequate critical account of his labours and life exists.
The first impression of one who turns to the De Jure Belli must be unfavourable. The laborious and uncritical collecting of authorities, the apparent inability to proceed a single step with- out employing some learned Theban as a go-cart, may recall the .sentence pronounced by Scaliger on one of Gentilis's legal contem- poraries,—Ce n'est qu'un amasseur, ii ne jugerien. The hasty reader will be apt to think him an anticipator of Mr. Jacox,—or even an earlier Mr. Timbs, who had the run of a classical library, and who browsed at random. But this would be an erroneous impression. These were the distinctive faults of the age, not Gentilis's. What is valuable to his work is something which he did not learn from his contemporaries. The plan of the treatise is bold. He finds that no writer before him had spoken definitely of the laws of war ; he proposes to go to the fountain.head, to consult the laws of nature,—in other words, to be guided by general usage, and to derive therefrom the true laws of war. Of course, the execu- tion does not altogether correspond to the plan. He often solves problems in a way which will strike a modern reader as merely superficial. Take, for example, his treatment of the interesting ques- tion who may be belligerents. May the Dukes of Parma, Mantua, and Ferrara, and other potentates not altogether independent, declare war? A modern writer would have answered this on general grounds ; he would have entered, as Bluntschli in discuss- ing the question does, into considerations of expediency and the nature of a State. Gentilis's unsatisfactory solution is :—" Ista facti qumstio definienda eat ex tenore investitarum, et instru- mento libertatum, sive alio quo jure." It must not, however, be supposed that Gentilis is in the habit of solving political questions in this narrow, legal spirit. He is essentially a moralist—not a moralist after the fashion of the day—not merely one who could quote Cicero's Offices fluently, but one who interrogated his con- science. He had the good-sense to brush aside the fashionable legal subtleties of Baldus about treaties,—subtleties which would have destroyed their efficacy. He had the courage to advocate tolera- tion for all opinions. In many respects he was before his time ; had his Commentaries been deferred for half a century, his fame would have been greater than it is, and we should often speak of Gentilis where we now name Grotius.
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