Schupfer, Francesco

SCHUPFER, FRANCESCO. - Legal historian, b. at Chioggia on 5 Jan. 1833, d. at Rome on 8 Aug. 1925.

Directed toward legal studies by the environment of Vienna, where he had followed his father, who had moved there to the Court of Cassation, Schupfer enrolled at the University of Innsbruck (1850), then went to Heidelberg and again to Vienna, where he took his degree. After a period of further study at Göttingen (1858), he became a lecturer at Padua (1860). Appointed extraordinary professor at Innsbruck (1864), he returned to Padua for Roman Law (1866), immediately coming into conflict with Pertile (v.), who taught the History of Law there, and he took part in local administrative struggles. The anticlerical stance he displayed on that occasion, together with his scholarly competence, led the government to invite him in order to set him against the pontifical academics: he accepted the invitation and moved to Rome (1878). Schupfer left a deep mark in the field of legal history; his work, uninterrupted for sixty-two years, lively and highly personal but uneven, bears the influence of the Germanist school, whose conclusions he too often accepts, and seeks to prove the general infiltration of Germanic customs into every part of Italy. It nevertheless remains fundamental in many respects even today, initiating, together with the contemporary works of Pertile and Del Giudice, the modern historical research of Italian law.

Fulvio Crosara