MANCINI, PASQUALE STANISLAO. Jurist and politician, b. 17 March 1817 at Castel Baronia (Avellino), d. in Rome on 26 Dec. 1888. After completing his studies at the University of Naples, he soon became a professor there. Having served as deputy to the Neapolitan Parliament (1848), he was forced for political reasons to flee to Turin, where (1850) a chair in external public and private international law was specially created for him. From 1872 he moved to the University of Rome.
Deputy to the Parliament, first subalpine and then national, continuously from 1860, he became the leader of the centre-left. He was counsellor to the Lieutenant-Governorship in the liberated Neapolitan provinces (1861) and several times minister (of Public Instruction in the Rattazzi cabinet [1862], of Justice with Depretis [from 1876 to 1878], of Foreign Affairs again with Depretis [from 1881 to 1885], concluding in that capacity the first treaty of the Triple Alliance [1882]). Tutor to King Umberto I, he was invested with the dignity of Minister of State and made a knight of the Civil Order of Savoy. He was among the founders of the Institute of International Law in Ghent, of which he also held the presidency.
M. is chiefly remembered as the proponent of the “principle of nationality,” which he formulated scientifically in his inaugural lecture in Turin in 1851 (La nazionalità come fonte del diritto delle genti), a work that sounded like a challenge to foreign domination in Italy and provoked protests from Austria and the Kingdom of Naples at the court of Turin.
In the field of ecclesiastical policy, he, a believer in the jurisdictionalist tradition of Naples, defended its principles throughout his political career, especially on the occasion of the law on the liquidation of ecclesiastical property and the Law of Guarantees (v.). He therefore repeatedly denied the right of bishops to leave their sees without the consent of the government authority; he affirmed—in open contrast with Church doctrine—that there existed “a single power, that of national sovereignty, and therefore one law and one universal, unlimited jurisdiction”; EXEQUATUR E PLACET (v.) and placet. Yet it is worth recalling that it was M. himself who advised St John Bosco not to seek recognition of the legal personality of the Salesian Society he had founded, so as to shield it from any danger of confiscation of ecclesiastical property.
Among his works are to be noted: Intorno alla filosofia del diritto e singolarmente intorno alle origini del diritto di punire (letters of T. Mamiani and P. S. M., Florence 1846, Leghorn 1875); Sommi lineamenti di una storia ideale della penalità (Rome 1874); Della vocazione del nostro secolo per la riforma e la codificazione del diritto delle genti e per l'ordinamento di una giustizia internazionale (ibid. 1874). His Saggi sulla nazionalità were published recently (Rome 1944, ed. F. Lopez de Oñate); his parliamentary speeches have been collected in three volumes (Rome 1893–97).