CALISSE, CARLO. – Historian of law, born in Civitavecchia on 29 January 1859, died on 23 April 1945. Deputy, senator, and honorary president of the Council of State. He taught at the Universities of Siena, Pisa, and Rome. Opposing Schupfer’s Germanist tendency, he maintained the paramount importance of Roman law and canon law in the historical formation of Italian law. He pointed to the transformation of Lombard law through the work of the Church. An advocate of the study of the common law, he understood it as the confluence of three fundamental elements: Roman law, canon law, and feudal law. In his view, however, the convergence of these elements, forming the common law, would not have taken place before the fourteenth century. From the general common law he believed it possible to distinguish the pontifical common law, which he regarded as a particular form of the common law, established in the Papal States through the prevailing efficacy of canonical equity.
His studies on Storia di Civitavecchia (1898, new ed. 1936), on Storia del Parlamento siciliano (1887), on Prefetti di Vico (1887), his lucid Corso di Storia del diritto italiano (1891); Le fonti (new ed. 1930), his Corso di diritto ecclesiastico (1892), his research on landed property in the Roman territory in the early Middle Ages (1884), and the study devoted to Usi civici nella provincia di Roma (1906), constitute his principal contributions to historical knowledge. A fervent Christian and admirer of the work of S. Caterina, to whom he was particularly devoted, he worked with passionate moderation to improve relations between the Church and the Italian State. In the land question, as a scholar and as a politician, he upheld the social function of property.