SGADUTO, FRANCESCO. - Jurist, b. at Bagheria (Palermo) on 30 July 1858, d. at Favara (Agrigento) on 29 June 1942.
A private lecturer in the History of Italian Law and in Ecclesiastical Law at the University of Rome in 1883, in November 1884 he was appointed professor in charge of Ecclesiastical Law at the University of Palermo, and in 1886 full professor of this discipline at the University of Naples. From this he then moved to the University of Rome, where he remained until the end of his career in 1933, also holding for some years the office of dean of the Faculty of Jurisprudence and that of rector from 1919 to 1922. He was appointed senator of the Kingdom on 1 March 1923.
Through his merit the study and teaching of the law of the State in ecclesiastical matters presented itself for the first time as an autonomous system among the various juridical disciplines. In fact, until that time ecclesiastical law had always been understood as canon law, that is, the legislation issued by the Catholic Church, whereas later, as S. himself affirmed in his inaugural lecture at Palermo, the subject was considered "not so much from the point of view of the Church as from that of the State." In that inaugural lecture S. traced the lines of the juridical framing of the discipline, teaching that ecclesiastical law had to deal with "the laws of the civil power in ecclesiastical matters," while nevertheless taking into account "the canons and decrees... that have been recognized directly or indirectly by the civil power." He therefore pointed to the laws of the State as the basis of the subject, holding that in the juridical order of the State only the law issued directly by the State, or approved and received by it, has the force of a juridical norm; and this in contrast with the traditional conception, according to which the legislation of the Catholic Church constituted legislation in force within the order of the State.
Turning one's attention to S.'s scientific output, one perceives how in him there was alive a political sentiment conforming to the regalist tradition of the Mezzogiorno, according to which the State was not to be non-interventionist, but rather to control everything that issues from the sphere of religious sentiment so as to give rise to external manifestations pertaining to the field of the juridically relevant. Among the various fundamental points for S., in the establishment of relations between State and Church, his conception regarding freedom of conscience is interesting. In contrast with Ruffini (v.), who had affirmed that religious freedom can exist even with a non-separatist ecclesiastical political system, S. maintained that it is a necessary requirement for religious freedom that the State be not confessional, but jurisdictionalist, inasmuch as "the freedom of individual groups, like that of individual natural persons, cannot exist without an organ that limits their spheres of action, leaving them free up to the point where they do not come to touch the freedom of others and the general interest... of the State."
S.'s theses present an eminently laicist tendency to be considered, moreover, in the light of the anticlerical ideology that dominated in Italy especially at the end of the last century and in the early years of this one. If, from the point of view of his attitude toward the religious problem, one wishes to give an objective judgment on S.'s scientific elaboration, it seems one cannot disregard the historical and political climate in which he lived, inasmuch as one must bear in mind how the spirit and content of the Italian positive legislation itself in ecclesiastical matters, which formed the object of his interpretation and scientific systematization, were so vividly affected by the influence of the then dominant climate as to proceed from the substantial presupposition of the laicist conception.
S.'s very numerous publications can be divided into three groups. The first comprises notable contributions of a historical-juridical character, aimed at illustrating the relations between State and Church in given periods: Stato e Chiesa negli scrittori politici dalla fine della lotta per le investiture sino alla morte di Ludovico il Bavaro (1122-1347), Florence 1882; Stato e Chiesa secondo fra Paolo Sarpi e la coscienza pubblica durante l'interdetto di Venezia del 1607, ibid. 1885; Stato e Chiesa sotto Leopoldo I Granduca di Toscana (1765-90), ibid. 1885; Stato e Chiesa nelle due Sicilie dai Normanni ai giorni nostri (secc. XI-XIX), Palermo 1887. The second group consists of studies relating to particular questions, for the most part of Sicilian ecclesiastical law, among which mention should be made of: Prestazioni ad enti ecclesiastici siciliani (in Rivista di diritto ecclesiastico, 5 [1895], pp. 26-31); Per l'abolizione delle decime siciliane (in Riforma sociale, fasc. v, vol. X); Decime siciliane: pretesa origine geronica (in Diritto e giurisprudenza, 1901); Rappresentanza del Capitolo cattedrale specie in Sicilia (in Diritto e giurisprudenza, 1904); Cappelle ed opere pie nelle Due Sicilie, Naples 1906; Fabbricerie siciliane (Maramme), ibid. 1911. In the third group are to be counted the writings of a general character on the ecclesiastical law of the State, such as, for example, those concerning ecclesiastical property, the precedence of civil over religious marriage, the position of the Holy See, the relations between the State and the religious confessions, and so on. The most important among these studies, to which anyone dealing with problems of the discipline cannot fail to refer, is the Diritto ecclesiastico vigente in Italia - Manuale
(Naples 1890-91, 4th ed. Crotone 1923-25), a work in which the subject is expounded in its entirety, although an extensive treatment is reserved above all for ecclesiastical bodies, studied from the point of view of the Italian legislation that took shape in the years of the Risorgimento.
Bibliography
Lorenzo Spinelli