Farinacci, Prospero

FARINACCI, PROSPERO. - Italian jurist, b. in Rome on 30 Oct. 1554, d. there on 30 Oct. 1616. He studied law at the University of Padua and there received his doctorate, revealing even as a student a keen sense of law and a particular ability in forensic dialectic. To his name and to that of Tiberio Deciani is above all linked the new science of criminal law which, from the first attempts of the postglossators, became an independent discipline on the foundation of Roman and canon law and with the contribution of the principal statutory provisions.

In the field of criminal doctrine F. stood out for the great originality of his views together with a marked practicality in them. In his writings he shows himself a connoisseur of the theories developed up to his time, to which he lastly and regularly opposes his own opinion.

To the systematization of the science of law and of criminal procedure belongs principally his Praxis et theorica criminalis (Lyons 1616), which exercised a notable influence on foreign criminal legislation down to the whole of the 18th century. To him belong the other minor writings De haeresi, De immunitate ecclesiae and De testibus, the powerful collection of the Decisiones Rotas romanas, the treatises De contractibus and De ultimis voluntatibus, and the collections of Consilia and Decisiones. As a lawyer he had particular renown for the defense he undertook in famous trials such as that of Beatrice Cenci.

Antonio Rota