Gentili, Alberico

Abstract

Alberico Gentili was an Italian jurist who was exiled to England for religionis causa. He had studied law in Perugia and obtained his doctorate in 1572. In 1579, he was forced to flee Italy to escape the Inquisition’s persecution, along with his father Matthew and his brother Scipione. Following a lengthy European pilgrimage, Gentili took refuge in London in 1580, where he quickly became a member of the Leicester-Sidney circle, the most influential of the time, in pursuit of a prestigious academic position. His commitment and literary production were vast, intervening in all major political and religious facets of contemporary England. Gentili embraced the Anglican faith, initially siding in favor of the Elizabethan policy and later the James I policy, supporting political autonomy from the jurisprudence of theology. His masterpiece was the De iure belli, in which he broke with the medieval tradition of just war and secularized the concept of war, reserving exercise to sovereign states. Gentili theorized the necessity of religious tolerance within the state, entrusting the government responsibility to ensure that there were no acts of violence and to mediate between the parties. His political thought oscillated between Republicanism and absolutism. In De Legationibus, Gentili praised Machiavelli as a Republican anti-tyrannical author, while in the later Regales disputationes, the jurist sided in favor of Stuart absolutism. This ambiguity was typical of Gentile’s thought process, which is characterized by certain underlying tensions between what was useful and honest, between innovation and conservation, and between the defense of Republican freedom and affirmation of full sovereignty.