Domingo on Contardo Ferrini: A Contemplative Legal Historian

Rafael Domingo, Emory University School of Law; University of Navarra School of Law, is publishing Contardo Ferrini (1859–1902): A Contemplative Legal Historian in Great Christian Jurists in Italian History (Orazio Condorelli and Rafael Domingo eds., Cambridge University Press, 2020) (forthcoming).

A scholar of great originality and deep spirituality, Contardo Ferrini belonged to an outstanding generation of Italian legal historians of Antiquity, who brought to prominence the studies of Roman law just after the establishment of the Kingdom of Italy (1861). Moved by a patriotic feeling and scientific enthusiasm, they tried to wrest intellectual supremacy from Germany. In addition to Ferrini, the most influential representatives of this select group included Vittorio Scialoja, Carlo Fadda, Silvio Perozzi, Salvatore Riccobono, and Pietro Bonfante. Although Scialoja, not Ferrini, was the leader of the group, Ferrini was a very prominent member of it, the most distinguished expert in Roman Byzantine law and criminal law, and probably the one who more properly embodied the notion of Christian jurist. Ferrini lived in a time of strong tensions between church and state due to the Roman question. He was a forerunner of the theology of the universal call to holiness, deeply developed decades later by the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), and he contributed to linking Christian love, especially for the poor, with the flourishing of human science.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.