TANUCCI, BERNARDO. - Statesman, b. 4 Feb. 1698 at Stia (Arezzo), d. near Naples 29 Apr. 1783. Professor of law at Pisa, he followed Charles of Bourbon to the Kingdom of Naples and there served as Secretary of State for Grace and Justice and subsequently for Foreign Affairs and the Royal Household.
He devoted much attention to the administration of justice through the Giunta dei Tribunali and sought to improve the functioning of the baronial courts (1738). He proposed to provide the Kingdom with a unified code of laws, but the initiative failed due to court intrigues. He promoted the reform of the university by abolishing chairs of disciplines now considered useless and establishing seven new ones.
Although T., contrary to prevailing principles and tendencies, proved rather sceptical about the effects of reforms, his efforts to prevent abuses and strengthen royal power nonetheless represented undeniable and considerable progress for the Kingdom. He was especially concerned with limiting ecclesiastical power, but his actions were not motivated by irreligion; rather, his political conceptions sometimes rendered relations between Church and State extremely difficult. Despite a Concordat concluded with Rome in 1741, to which T. had contributed greatly, the first disputes arose in 1746 over the attempt to introduce the Inquisition into the country.
The decisive struggle began after the departure of Charles of Bourbon, who was called to the throne of Spain; the younger son Ferdinand remained in the Kingdom of Naples. T. then extended his power (1759) and was placed over the ecclesiastical secretariat under Carlo De Marco, his protégé, who shared his ideas. Charles III, however, though he continued to take an interest in the affairs of the Kingdom during the regency, remained reluctant to adopt an excessively hostile stance toward the Curia, as he had been during his stay in Naples, and confined himself to a platonic show of favour. In 1759 the question of churches under royal patronage arose, one of the most important controversies with the papal government. The two powers, lay and ecclesiastical, disputed the right to judge the ownership of the benefices of such churches. With two laws, in 1759 and 1762, T. decided that in such cases judgment belonged to the secular courts. Another law (1762) established the obligation for ecclesiastical beneficiaries to distribute a third of their revenues to the poor, with lay officials overseeing the enforcement of the law.
In 1763 T. took charge of all the Kingdom’s policy. It was firm and aligned with the other Bourbon states in the struggle against the Jesuits, which culminated in their expulsion from the country. He maintained his authority even after the sovereign came of age; he was forced to leave government in 1776 due to the different political orientation of Ferdinand’s wife, the Austrian archduchess Maria Carolina. T. initiated the excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum and served as head of the Accademia Ercolanense, founded in 1758.