The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Gentili, Alberico

Born Jan. 14, 1552, in San Ginesio; died June 19, 1608, in Oxford, England. Italian jurist, diplomat, professor of civil law.

Gentili taught civil law at Oxford University. He was the author of On Ambassadorial Law (1585), Commentaries on the Law of War (1588), On the Law of Prizes (published 1613), and others. His best-known work is On the Law of War, published in 1598. Gentili laid the foundation for the positive school in the science of international law.

References in periodicals archive

Recent scholarship has also demonstrated how classical Roman legal theories, in combination with early modern Italian interpretations, extended to English conceptions of international conflict and justice, especially in the works of Oxford Roman law scholar Alberico Gentili (1552-1608) (Kingsbury and Straumann, 2010).

Law and literature in comparative perspectives: Tracing Shylock's case from Italian novelle to American courtrooms

En este sentido, segun los comentarios de Benedict Kingsbury and Benjamin Straumann a la obra "The roman Foundations of the law of Nations: Alberico Gentili and the Justice of Empire": "in the second and first centuries BC., which were fundamental in the formation of the Roman empire, the Romans saw their empire and their imperialism in terms of the extension of their power over others, an extension which might or might non involve the sending of troops and commanders to the lands in which those people lived, on a long--lasting or a temporary basis.

THINK ABOUT THE JURIDICAL ROMAN ROOTS OF PRECEDENT "ONE SHIP COMPANY"/REFLEXIONES SOBRE LAS RAICES JURIDICAS ROMANAS DEL PRECEDENTE "ONE SHIP COMPANY"

The tone and audience were a response to Alberico Gentili, to whom the study of war was not a part of the moralist's trade.

The law of war in Francisco Suarez: the civilizing project of Spanish Scholasticism

He examines what he describes as the three key prescriptive moments of this development: the foundational international legal works of Alberico Gentili and Hugo Grotius in the context of the wars against Catholic Spain in the 16th century, World War I, and World War II.

Democracies and the shock of war; the law as a battlefield

Alberico Gentili, The Wars of the Romans: A Critical Edition and Translation of De armis Romanis, ed by Benedict Kingsbury & Benjamin Straumama, translated by David Lupher (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).

Alberico Gentili, The Wars of the Romans: A Critical Edition and Translation of De armis Romanis

Alberico Gentili, whose treatise De legationibus libri tres was commissioned as a response to a specific ethical lapse--the Spanish ambassador Mendoza's involvement in the Throckmorton plot against Elizabeth (52)--pins his hopes not on narrative means but on the codification of nascent principles of international law, transposing ethical questions to a "realm of fixed laws" (61).

Fictions of Embassy: Literature and Diplomacy in Early Modern Europe

And as the Seventeenth Century founder of international law, Hugo Grotius, says, war is justified only if it is done to ward off a clear danger to life, not just to property, that is "immediate and imminent in point of time." (15) Grotius makes this point to counter those, like Alberico Gentili, who contended that mere fear of any sort was sufficient to justify what Grotius called "anticipatory slaying." (16) Grotius argued that the danger must not be merely assumed, but must be shown to require immediate action because of the impending harm that would result to the victim.

Aggression, humanitarian intervention, and terrorism