GRAVINA, GIAN VINCENZO. — Man of letters and jurist, b. at Rogiano (Cosenza) on 20 February 1664, d. at Rome on 6 January 1718. Introduced to classical studies by his cousin Gregorio Caloprese, a Cartesian, he also studied history and law at Naples. In 1689 he went to Rome as secretary to Cardinal Pignatelli. In 1690 he was among the founders of the Arcadia and drew up its laws in the arcalic style of the Twelve Tables; but he later dissented from the other Arcadians, finding the prevailing literary orientation too superficial, and in 1711 left it to found the Accademia dei Quirini.
He alternated literary studies with those of the history of law, nor were specifically moral and spiritual concerns foreign to him, as is attested by the pamphlet Hydra mystica sive de corrupta morali doctrina (1691, under the pseudonym Prisco Censorino Fotistico), in which he denounces the dangers both of casuistry and of Protestant heresy. In 1699 Innocent XII appointed him to the chair of civil law at the University of Rome, after he had published Specimen prisci iuris (1697), which revealed his legal talent; in 1703 he moved to the chair of canon law. His originality lies in having reacted against the abstract natural law of Cartesian inspiration, reconnecting law with history, with an ingenuity less synthetic than Vico’s, who was his friend, but with a teaching immediately clearer and more effective; thus he may be considered a precursor and stimulus of Vico himself, and one of the sources of Montesquieu. He developed these arguments more fully in De ortu et progressu iuris civilis (1701), which consequently became the first book of the definitive work Origiman iuris civilis libri tres (1708).
In the field of letters, his major work is the Ragion poetica (1708; V. l’ed. a cura di G. Natali, Lanciano 1920), in which he reconnects with Aristotelian poetics in order to react against the abuses of seventeenth-century literature, but, by insisting on the intrinsically moral value of the practice of literature, he foreshadows and prepares the climate of the literary renewal of the eighteenth century. His five tragedies (1712), on the other hand, are unsuccessful, although they helped combat
the vanity of romantic tragedies, redirecting tragedy toward history: for this purpose, the treatise Della tragedia (1715) was more effective.
Also noteworthy are the discourses he wrote on the method of study: De instauratione studiorum (1712), and the unpublished letters to Francesco Pignatelli, bishop of Naples, in which he sketches the Roman events of the late seventeenth century.