Pierino Belli

Pierino Belli (Latin: Petrinus Bellus; 20 March 1502 – 31 December 1575) was an Italian soldier and jurist.

Biography

Son of the nobles Berentina and Pietro Antonio from Alba, Pierino (or Petrino) Belli shared both the family sympathies for the Marquis of Montferrat and the Empire and the aversion for the Marquis of Saluzzo and France. Unlike his brother Bartholomew, however, it was not in military enterprises that he distinguished himself, but in the more congenial field of law. After the first studies in Alba, in fact, had attended the University of Perugia and Pavia graduating in utroque iure.

In 1533, having given Alba to the people of Saluzzo, he moved with his family to Asti, where he continued to practice law, becoming vicar of the Pretoria and patron of the municipality. On June 22, 1537 he welcomed Charles V in Alba, taken back by the imperialists, but he did not return to live there as his brothers did. The same year he was appointed judge of crimes and military disputes in the imperial army.

After moving to Asti, Pierino Belli had a long relationship with Maria De Bonardis, from whom he had two children: Giovanni Amedeo and Livia. In 1541, however, he married Giulia Damiani, widow of Alessandro de Veraxiis, from whom he had three other children: Francesco, Knight of Saint Stephen and monk of the Order of Carthusians, Ottavia, who later married Filiberto Roero of Poirino, and Domenico, grand chancellor of the Savoy.

On May 18, 1543 he obtained from the Falletti family of Benevello the lordship of Bonvicino in the Langhe region and in 1546 he bought, together with his brothers, half of Grinzane. He was also counselor of the Duke of Mantua Federico II Gonzaga, who had become in the meantime lord of Montferrat, which induced to remain faithful to the emperor in the continuous wars that broke out between France and Spain. As a reward, in 1552 Philip II appointed him senator of the Duchy of Milan.

After the peace of Cateau-Cambrésis (2/3 April 1559), Emmanuel Philibert of Savoy entrusted him with the reorganization of the Savoy duchy from the legislative and judicial point of view, inserting him (November 1560) among his six state councillors, using him for difficult diplomatic missions (such as the recovery of the five strongholds of Turin, Chieri, Chivasso, Pinerolo and Villanova d'Asti still in French hands, which lasted from 1562 to 1574) and relying on his expertise for the resolution of various legal and border issues.

He died in Turin on December 31, 1575, and was buried in the Asti Cathedral where his sons erected a sepulchral monument.

Almost three centuries later, on June 20, 1853, the city of Alba honored his memory by naming a street after him. The city of Turin did the same.

De re militari et bello tractatus

Dutch engraving of the late sixteenth century that illustrates the brutality of war

The numerous public assignments entrusted to him undoubtedly distracted Pierino Belli from his legal studies, taking away precious time, but the concrete performance of these tasks (for example, the long experience as "war auditor") reinforced in him the need to deepen, order and theoretically redefine the legal and legislative aspects directly faced in the field. The relatively "quiet" years he spent in the Senate of Milan allowed him to write and complete the work to which his fame is mainly linked: the De re militari et bello tractatus that, published in 1563 with a dedication to Philip II, represented the most comprehensive manual on military ethics and law in an era of great political change and transition between the old and the new international order in which the war was changing its nature. This work, which is also credited with having laid the foundations for the recognition of the rights of the individual even during conflicts, would later inspire the main scholars of modern international law, starting with Alberico Gentili and Hugo Grotius.

Belli's text, however, after its initial success, which saw it included in the vast legal anthology in 25 volumes of the Tractatus universi iuris (1583), seemed to fall into a sort of "malicious forgetfulness" on the part of those authors who, instead, drew on it extensively in the elaboration of their own thought. This until its "rediscovery" in the second half of the nineteenth century, thanks in particular to the jurist Pasquale Stanislao Mancini, who was the first to highlight the anticipatory character of many judgments and reflections.

See also

• Balthazar Ayala
• Classics of International Law

Works

• De re militari et bello tractatus, divisus in partes 11. In quo, praeterea, quae de Re militari tractantur, obiter multa, quae ad civilem administrationem attinent, attinguntur (1563)

Modern editions

• De re militari et bello tractatus. A treatise on military matters and warfare (1936; translated into English by Herbert C. Nutting)
• De re militari et bello tractatus. Trattato sulla milizia e sulla guerra (2006; translated into Italian by Cosimo Cascione)
• Traité sur l'art militaire et la guerre. De re militari et bello tractatus (2007; translated into French by Dominique Gaurier)

References

• Vittorio Amedeo Arullani, Un albese precursore del pacifismo, Milano, La Compositrice, 1910.
• Guido Chialvo, "Nuove ricerche intorno a Pierino Belli", in Bollettino bibliografico subalpino, 1907, pp. 293-319, e 1911, pp. 1-15.
• Guido Chialvo, Vita e opera di Pierino Belli. Contributo alla storia della filosofia del diritto, Roma, Emidio Sabucchi, 1916.
• Guido Chialvo, "Il precursore italiano del diritto internazionale: Pierino Belli", in I diritti dei popoli, n. 3, 1919.
• Cosimo Cascione, "Diritto romano e diritto internazionale: qualche osservazione sul Tractatus di Pietrino Belli", in Studi in onore di Remo Martini, Milano, Giuffrè, 2008, vol. 1º, pp. 469-478.
• Rinaldo Comba e Gian Savino Pene Vidari (a cura di), Un giurista tra principi e sovrani. Pietrino Belli a 500 anni dalla nascita (atti del convegno di studi tenuto ad Alba il 30 novembre 2002), Alba, Fondazione Ferrero, 2004.
• Lino Marini, "Governanti e governati nello stato sabaudo: un'interpretazione del rapporto nel suo tempo più ricco", in Studi urbinati, n. 1, 1963, pp. 15-45.
• Lino Marini e Piero Craveri, "Belli, Pierino", in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Roma, Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1965, vol. 7º, pp. 673-678.
• Efisio Mulas, Pierino Belli da Alba, precursore di Grozio. Torino, Utet, 1878.
• Arthur Nussbaum, A Concise History of the Law of Nations. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1954.
• Federigo Sclopis, Storia della legislazione italiana, Torino, Pomba, 1840-1844, vol. 2º "Progressi".
• Giuseppe Vernazza, Vita di Pietrino Belli di Alba, signore di Grinzane e di Bonvicino, consiglier di stato di Emanuel Filiberto, Torino, Stamperia reale, 1783.

External links

• Works by Pierino Belli at Gallica
• Belli, Pierino