PERTILE, Antonio. – Italian legal historian, born in Agordo on 10 Sept. 1830, died in Padua on 4 March 1895. He studied at the Universities of Graz, Vienna, and Padua, where he graduated in 1855 and two years later obtained the chair of legal history; from then on he devoted himself to the work *Storia del diritto italiano dalla cattedra dell’Impero romano alla codificazione* (6 vols., Padua 1873–87; 2nd definitive ed., 1892–1903).
This vast exposition, the first and fundamental milestone of the new discipline, still seems to depend, in method and arrangement of material, on the history of German law by F. Walter. Subject to both lavish praise and unwarranted hostility, it does not constitute a perfect model of documentary compilation nor a true synthesis of legal institutions, yet it traces their evolution on the basis of sources and within limits of place and time hitherto undefined. Of the two aims that P. declared he had achieved with the help of Providence—namely, to provide the design and lay the foundation of the history of Italian law—his work remains imperishable.