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. After having been a deputy in the Neapolitan Parliament (1848), he was forced for political reasons to flee to Turin, where (1850) the chair of external public law and private international law was specially established for him. From 1872 he moved to the University of Rome.
A deputy in Parliament, first subalpine and then national, continuously from 1860, he became there the leader of the centre-left. He was a councillor of the Lieutenancy in the liberated Neapolitan provinces (1861) and several times a minister (of Public Education in the Rattazzi cabinet [1862], of Justice with Depretis [from 1876 to 1878], of Foreign Affairs again with Depretis [from 1881 to 1885], stipulating in that capacity the first treaty of the Triple Alliance [1882]. Tutor of King Umberto I, he was invested with the dignities of minister of State and knight of the Civil Order of Savoy. He was among the founders of the Institute of International Law of Ghent, of which he also held the presidency.
M. is known above all as the champion of the «principle of nationality», which he formulated scientifically in the Turin inaugural lecture of 1851 (La nazionalità come fonte del diritto delle genti), which sounded like a challenge to foreign domination in Italy and provoked the protests of Austria and of the Kingdom of Naples at the court of Turin.
In the field of ecclesiastical policy, he, heir to the Neapolitan jurisdictionalist tradition, defended its principles throughout his political activity, especially on the occasion of the law on the liquidation of the ecclesiastical estate and of the Law of Guarantees (v.). He therefore repeatedly denied the right of bishops to absent themselves from their sees without the consent of the government authority; he affirmed - in open contrast with the doctrine of the Church - that there is «a single power, that of national sovereignty, and therefore a single law and a single universal, unlimited jurisdiction»; he upheld the legitimacy of the exequatur (v.) and of the placet. It is also worth remembering, however, that it was precisely M. who suggested to St. John Bosco never to seek recognition of the legal personality of the Salesian Society he had founded, in order to remove it from any danger of confiscation of ecclesiastical property.
Among his works should be remembered: Intorno alla filosofia del diritto e singolarmente intorno alle origini del diritto di punire (letters of T. Mamiani and P. S. M., Florence 1846, Livorno 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 recently republished (Rome 1944, edited by F. Lopez de Oñate); his parliamentary speeches have been collected in three volumes (Rome 1893-97).
Bibliography3 works
Rodolfo Danieli