CALISSE, CARLO. - Legal historian, b. at Civitavecchia on 29 Jan. 1859, d. on 23 Apr. 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 pre-eminent 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 ius commune, he understood this as the confluence of three fundamental elements: Roman law, canon law and feudal law. But the confluence of the aforesaid elements, forming the ius commune, would in his view have come about no earlier than the 14th century. From the general ius commune he believed he could distinguish the papal ius commune, which he regarded as a particular form of the ius commune, determined in the Papal States by the prevailing efficacy of canonical equity.
His studies on the Storia di Civitavecchia (1898, new ed. 1936), on the Storia del Parlamento siciliano (1887), on the 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 the Usi civici nella provincia di Roma (1906), constitute his principal contributions to historical knowledge. A fervent Christian and admirer of the work of St. Catherine, of whom he was particularly devout, he laboured with passionate moderation to improve relations between the Church and the Italian State. In the land question he upheld, both as a scholar and as a politician, the social function of property.
Bibliography2 works
Antonio Rota