The Canonical Law in West Indian and the Italian Legal Thought (Sardegna, Savoia, Piemonte)

Abstract

The dynastic ties existing between the Spanish crown and various states of the Italian Peninsula brought with them a mutual knowledge of their respective intellectual productions. Regarding the relations between Church and State, the Spanish doctrine of the predominance of the latter over the former had a long-standing history – in its patronatist, vicarialist, and regalistic variants – and was widely utilized by the faction opposed to the Roman Curia in the various Italian states. The Gallicanism condensed in the Declaration of the Clergy of France of 1682, which had wide circulation, also influenced the Italian “intelligenzia”. To this were added the openly anti-curial stances of Jansenism, which had achieved significant diffusion beyond and within the Alps, although, like in Spain, it was more characterized as a political rather than a theological movement. The presence of the Austrian crown in various Italian domains, on the other hand, allowed for a tendency towards ecclesiastical power pressure, which culminated in the doctrinal line known as Josephinism. These elements, along with other indigenous ones, contributed to the emergence of various historians, civil jurists, canonists, and theologians who advocated for what came to be known as the postulates of the Catholic Enlightenment, which, concerning the relations between Church and State, manifested in the phenomena of the “giurisdizionalismo”.