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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 May 2022
In this article, I will show how literary imitation qualifies as a specific mode of transmission of jus gentium texts and ideas. Focusing on this specific angle allows us to see how Gentili and Grotius were not just literary erudites, using poetic references to craft their own international legal arguments; they professionalized the use of literary canons in such a way that they became constitutive of jus gentium as a discipline. Canonical references were transmitted through marginalia, the printed annotations we find abundantly in the margins of their texts, and that constituted for at least two centuries the argumentative structure of how jus gentium was written. Thus, a parallel legal history unfolds between the lines of marginalia, a story made of textual interpretations, omissions, and intentional interpolations. I will offer a concrete example of this textual machinery at play, namely Gentili’s and Grotius’ discussion of the same passage from Virgil’s Aeneid. The passage in question, known by literary historians as the ‘Helen episode’, is a case of contested Virgilian authority. The ‘Helen episode’, regardless of its textual reliability, is used by Gentili and Grotius to make a specific claim: that women cannot legally qualify as enemies under the law of nations. Such a story is particularly revealing, as it allows us to acknowledge the jurisgenetic role of literary canons, as well as their powerful role in the production of arguments of order that became constitutive of international law.
1 Classical antiquity seems to deserve no place in contemporary international law. Starting from the eighteenth century, its paradigmatic power starts to be criticized as methodologically inefficient, only to be dismissed altogether in the nineteenth century as a consequence of the professionalization of the discipline of international law. As famously stated by Emer de Vattel, Grotius’ references to classical antiquity were to be considered inessential ‘embellishment’, rather than substantial additions to his arguments. See E. de Vattel, The Law of Nations (2008), at 19. On the twentieth century reprisal of classical antiquity to redefine the concept of jus gentium see Jacob Giltaij’s contribution in this issue, at doi: 10.1017/S0922156522000036.
2 C. Warren, Literature and the Law of Nations (2015); B. Straumann, Roman Law in the State of Nature: The Classical Foundations of Hugo Grotius Natural Law (2015).
3 See D. Panizza, ‘Political Theory and Jurisprudence in Gentili’s De Iure Belli. The great debate between “theological” and “humanist” perspectives from Vitoria to Grotius’, (2005) 15 IILJ Working Paper, History and Theory of International Law Series; R. Tuck, The Rights of War and Peace: Political Thought and International Order from Grotius to Kant (1999); R. Tuck, Philosophy and Government (1993); D. Kelley, Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship (1970). Further contributions on Gentili’s humanism, against the background of Carl Schmitt’s famous praise of Gentili’s silete theologi in munere alieno! (C. Schmitt, The Nomos of the Earth (2003)) include: D. Panizza, Alberico Gentili giurista ideologo dell’Inghilterra elisabettiana (1981); D. Panizza (ed.), Alberico Gentili. Politica e religione nell’età delle guerre di religione, Atti del convegno della seconda Giornata Gentiliana, 17 maggio 1987 (2002); M. Ferronato and L. Bianchin (eds.), Silete theologi in munere alieno. Alberico Gentili e la seconda scolastica, Atti del Convegno Internazionale, 20-22 novembre 2008 (2011); G. Minnucci, Silete theologi in munere alieno. Alberico Gentili fra diritto, teologia e religione (2016); P. J. du Plessis and J. W. Cairns (eds.), Reassessing Legal Humanism and its Claims: Petere Fontes? (2016); C. N. Warren, ‘Gentili, the Poets and the Laws of War’, in B. Kingsbury and B. Straumann (eds.), The Roman Foundations of the Law of Nations. Alberico Gentili and the Justice of Empire (2011), at 148; as far as Grotius is concerned see Straumann, supra note 2, at 1.
4 See J. W. Binns, Alberico Gentili’s Defense of Poetry (1972); F. Iurlaro (ed.), Alberico Gentili, Libro di varie letture virgiliane al figlio Roberto (2020).
5 See contributions from Arthur Eyffinger, including ‘Outlines of Hugo Grotius’ Poetry’, (1982) 3 Grotiana at 57.
6 See, for example, Stephen Neff’s student edition of Grotius, Hugo Grotius on The Law of War and Peace (2012).
7 See Vattel, supra note 1.
8 See Anthony Grafton’s iconic The Footnote: A Curious History (1997). On Gentili’s use of marginalia see D. Quaglioni, ‘Introduzione’, in A. Gentili, Il diritto di guerra, (P. Nencini et al. ed, 2008); see also C. Zendri, ‘Alberico Gentili e il De iure belli. Metodo e fonti’, (2010) 10 Laboratoire Italien. On Grotius citation technique see Straumann, supra note 2, Ch. 3.
9 E. Batuman, The Idiot (2017); R. Cusk, Second Place (2021).
10 T. M. Greene, The Light in Troy: Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry (1982), at 1.
11 Ibid., at 10.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid., at 11.
14 T. S. Eliot, Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919).
15 Ibid.
16 H. Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence (1973).
17 C. Burrow, Imitating Authors: Plato to Futurity (2020), at 30.
18 Ibid., at 32.
19 On the inherently ‘pedagogic’ value of imitating Virgilian poetry see D. S. Wilson Okamura, Virgil in the Renaissance (2015); F. Iurlaro, ‘Introduzione’, in A. Gentili (F. Iurlaro ed.), Libro di varie letture virgiliane al figlio Roberto (2020).
20 See D. Quaglioni, ‘Introduzione’, in A. Gentili, Il diritto di guerra (P. Nencini et al. ed, 2008); see also C. Zendri, ‘Alberico Gentili e il De iure belli. Metodo e fonti’, (2010) 10 Laboratoire Italien, available at laboratoireitalien.revues.org/534; D. Panizza, ‘Political Theory and Jurisprudence in Gentili’s De Iure Belli. The great debate between “theological” and “humanist” perspectives from Vitoria to Grotius’, (2005) IILJ Working Paper 15 History and Theory of International Law Series; R. Tuck, The Rights of War and Peace: Political Thought and International Order from Grotius to Kant (1999), at 16; R. Tuck, Philosophy and Government 1572-1651 (1993). Further contributions on Gentili’s humanism, against the background of Carl Schmitt’s famous praise of Gentili’s silete theologi in munere alieno!; C. Schmitt, The Nomos of the Earth (2003) include: D. Panizza, Alberico Gentili giurista ideologo dell’Inghilterra elisabettiana (1981); D. Panizza (ed.), Alberico Gentili. Politica e religione nell’età delle guerre di religione, Atti del convegno della seconda Giornata Gentiliana, (17 maggio 1987) (2002); M. Ferronato and L. Bianchin (eds.), Silete theologi in munere alieno. Alberico Gentili e la seconda scolastica, Atti del Convegno Internazionale, 20-22 novembre 2008 (2011); G. Minnucci, Silete theologi in munere alieno. Alberico Gentili fra diritto, teologia e religione (2016); P. J. du Plessis and J. W. Cairns (eds.), Reassessing Legal humanism and its claim (2016); C. N. Warren, ‘Gentili, the Poets and the Laws of War’, in B. Kingsbury and B. Straumann, The Roman Foundations of the Law of Nations: Alberico Gentili and the Justice of Empire (2010), at 148 (hereafter Warren, ‘Gentili, The Poets’); D. Kelley: Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship: Language, Law and History in the French Renaissance (1970) (hereafter Kelley, Foundations); D. Kelley, Renaissance Humanism (1991); D. Kelley, ‘Vera Philosophia. The Philosophical Significance of Renaissance Jurisprudence’, (1976) 14 Journal of the History of Philosophy 267; Q. Skinner, Foundations of Modern Political Thought (1978).
21 For a biographical sketch of Gentili see G. van der Molen, Alberico Gentili and the Development of International Law: His Life Work and Times (1968); for a comprehensive review of the literature on Gentili see V. Vadi, War and Peace: Alberico Gentili and the Early Modern Law of Nations (2020).
22 Nellen, Hugo Grotius (n 321) chapter 15; A. Eyffinger, ‘Outline of Hugo Grotius’ Poetry’, (1982) 3 Grotiana 57; H. Nellen and E. Rabbie (eds.), Hugo Grotius, Theologian: Essays in Honour of G. H. M. Posthumus Meyjes (1994) (hereafter Nellen and Rabbie, Hugo Grotius, Theologian); R. Lesaffer and J. E. Nijman, The Cambridge Companion to Hugo Grotius (2021).
23 Hugonis Grotii Dicta Poetarum, apud Nicolaum Buonum, Parisiis (1625).
24 Hugonis Grotii Excerpta ex tragoediis et comoediis graecis, apud Nicolaum Buonum, Parisiis (1626).
25 This argument seems to rely on parallel between literary and political representation: for a critique of this equation see J. Guillory, The Problem of Literary Canon Formation (2013).
26 See supra note 17, at 27.
27 A. Grafton and G. W. Most, ‘Introduction’, in A. Grafton and G. W. Most (eds.), Canonical Texts and Scholarly Practices (2016), at 8. See also C. Warren, ‘History, Literature, and Authority in International Law’, in M. del mar, B. Meyler and S. Stern (eds.), The Oxford Handbook to Law and the Humanities (2020); P. Casanova, The World Republic of Letters (2007).
28 See Amorosa and Vergerio’s introduction to this collection at doi:10.1017/S0922156522000231.
29 E. Said, The World, The Text and The Critic (1983), at 22, quoted in J. Gorak, The Making of the Modern Canon: Genesis and Crisis of a Literary Idea (2013), at 187.
30 See supra note 29, at 186; see also J. Hankins, Virtue Politics: Soulcraft and Statecraft in Renaissance Italy (2020), at 2.
31 See supra note 27, at 7.
32 A similar point is made by Warren, supra note 2, at 34, 39.
33 See supra note 10, at 16.
34 A. Grafton, ‘The Margin as Canvas: A Forgotten Function of the Early Printed Page’, in K. Chang, G. W. Most and A. Grafton (eds.), Impagination: Layout and Materiality of Writing and Publication (2021), at 185–208.
35 W. E. Slights, Managing Readers: Printed Marginalia in English Renaissance Books (2001), at 3.
36 Slights here quotes P. Saenger and M. Heinlen, ‘Incunable Description and Its Implication for the Analysis of Fifteenth Century Reading habits’, in S. Hindman (ed.), Printing the Written Word: The Social History of Books (1991), at 256.
37 See Slights, supra note 35, at 3; see also K. Acheson (ed.), Early Modern English Marginalia (2018).
38 Slights, ibid., at 3; see also A. Pettegree and A. der Weduwen, The Bookshop of the World (2019), at 17.
39 E. Cavanagh, ‘Legal Thought and Empires: Analogies, Principles, and Authorities from the Ancients to the Moderns’, (2019) 10 Jurisprudence at 463, at 493.
40 T. Hampton, Writing from History: The Rhetorics of Exemplarity in Renaissance Literature (2018), at 10.
41 Although Gentili is more open to comparing ancient history with contemporary historiographers, as shown by his frequent quotations from F. Guicciardini and P. Giovio. On Gentili’s use of sources see ‘The Burden of Reason. Ratio probabilis, consensio omnium and the Impact of humanitas on Alberico Gentili’s Theory of Customary International Law’, (2017) 38 History of Political Thought, at 409.
42 B. Straumann, Crisis and Constitutionalism: Roman Political Thought from the Fall of the Republic to the Age of the Revolution (2018); J. Zetzel, ‘Natural Law and Poetic Justice: A Carneadean Debate in Cicero and Virgil’, (1996) 91 Classical Philology 297.
43 As argued by Straumann, Cicero thought that once these principles were deserted, the empire would inevitably fall out of lack of moral stamina. Straumann discusses first De republica and De officiis, where Cicero is concerned that if justice is turned into mere violence (from jus to vim). See Straumann, supra note 42, at 263.
44 Ibid., at 264, quoting Zetzel, supra note 42, at 310.
45 On Gentili’s discussion of historical method see his treatise De armis Romanis, published in 1599. A. Gentili, The Wars of the Romans (2010), at 14.
46 F. Iurlaro, ‘Il testo poetico della giustizia. Alberico e Scipione Gentili leggono la Repubblica di Platone’, (2017) Pegé 2.
47 B. Worden, The Sound of Virtue: Philip Sidney’s Arcadia and Elizabethan Politics (1996).
48 D. Pirillo, ‘Tasso at the French Embassy: Epic, Diplomacy, and the Law of Nations’, in J. Powell and W. T. Rossiter (eds.), Authority and Diplomacy from Dante to Shakespeare (2013), at 135; D. Suin, ‘Jus gentium e jus belli nelle Annotazioni sopra la Gierusalemme Liberata di Scipione Gentili’, (2017) Il Pensiero Politico, at 77.
49 See Warren, supra note 2, at 31–58.
50 Ibid.
51 M. Somos, Secularisation and the Leiden Circle (2011), at 162; on poetic and legal fiction see K. Eden, Poetic and Legal Fictions in The Aristotelian Tradition (1986).
52 See Eyffinger, supra note 5, at 59.
53 J. B. White, When Words Lose their Meaning. Constitutions and Reconstitutions of Language, Character, and Community (1984); A. Bianchi, International Law Theories (2017).
54 J. B. White, Heracles’ Bow: Essays on the Rhetoric and Poetics of the Law (1985).
55 See Binns, supra note 4.
56 J. Derrida, ‘Poetics and Politics of Witnessing’, in J. Derrida (ed.), Sovereignties in Question: the Poetics of Paul Celan (2005), at 65–96; L. Boisson de Chazournes and M. Kohen (eds.), International Law and the Quest for its Implementation: liber amicorum Vera Gowlland-Debbas (2010); P. Haldar, ‘The Articles of Law: Renaissance Theories of Evidence and the Poetic Life of Facts’, (2016) Law and Humanities, at 281; T. Jones, Poetic Language: Theory and Practice from Renaissance to the Present (2012).
57 Alberici Gentili De iure belli libri tres (1598) II, 21; Hugonis Grotii De iure belli ac pacis (1625), III, 4, 9.1. I further explore the topos of ‘imbecility’ in the Appendix to The Invention of Custom: Natural Law and The Law of Nations, ca. 1550–1750 (2021).
58 Virgil, Aeneid (2007), at 46.
59 C. Murgia, ‘The Date of The Helen-Episode’, (2003) 101 Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 405; G. Biagio Conte, The Rhetoric of Imitation: Genre and Poetic Memory in Virgil and Other Latin Poets (1996), at 201; see also, on Virgil’s imitation of Homer, A. Barchiesi, La traccia del modello: effetti omerici nella narrazione virgiliana (1984).
60 Supra, note 58, at 47.
61 The authority of Virgil is somehow proverbial: as Horsfall ironically asks, ‘Why is it clearly harder to write sensibly about Virgil than about Christ? Is Virgil really that much more sacred than the theologians material?’ See N. Horsfall, ‘Fraud as Scholarship: The Helen Episode and the Appendix Vergiliana’, (2006–7) 31–32 Illinois Classical Studies 1, at 3.
62 Servius, Commentarii in Vergilii Aeneidos Libros II, 591 (2010); see also G. P. Goold, ‘Servius and the Helen Episode’, (1970) Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 74, at 101.
63 Virgil, supra note 58, at 144–5 (VI, 494–548).
64 P. A. Perotti, ‘Qualche osservazione in margine alla scena di Elena’, (2014) 73 Latomus 629.
65 K. J. Reckford, ‘Helen in Aeneid 2 and 6’, (1981) 14 Arethusa 85.
66 See Conte, supra note 59, at 202.
67 Ibid., at 206.
68 See Horsfall, supra note 61, at 18; and later, at 27: ‘if, thought, an interpolator’s skill is measured by the number of scholars he has hoodwinked, the author of HE has been wonderfully successful, unmatched, indeed, among the interpolators: that he emerges as sometimes rather too Virgilian to be Virgil is offered both as (negative) proof of his identity and as tribute to his skill’.
69 Iulii Caesaris Scaligeri Poetices libri septem, (1561) III, 24 Lyon, apud Sebastianum Gryphium, at 112.
70 Ibid., at 95.
71 Antonii Bernardi Mirandulani episcopi Casertani, Disputationes in quibus primum ex professo Monomachia… philosophicis rationibus astruitur, Basileae, per Henricum Petri, 1562, at 93; the Latin verb ‘fingere’ shares the same etymological root of the word ‘fictio’.
72 It might be interesting to see this authoritarianism in relation with Gentili’s well-known political absolutism, as he developed it in his later Regales disputationes (1603).
73 Hugonis Grotii De iure belli ac pacis (1646), at 528.
74 On Grotius and tragedy see M. Somos, ‘Enter Secularisation: Heinsius’s De tragoediae constitutione’, (2010) 46 History of European Ideas, at 19; F. Iurlaro, Grotius, ‘Dio Chrysostom and the Invention of Customary Ius Gentium’, (2019) 40 Grotiana.
75 M. Koskenniemi, ‘Enchanted by Tools? An Enlightenment Perspective’, (2020) 35 Am. U. Int’l L. Rev 399.
76 M. Koskenniemi, To the Uttermost Parts of the World: Legal Imagination and International Power 1300-1870 (2021). See F. Iurlaro, ‘Disenchanting Gentili: Chapter 3 - Italian Lessons. Ius Gentium and Reason of States’, European Journal of International Law, forthcoming.
77 For a contrary argument see Acheson, supra note 37, at 70, in which the author argues that early modern female writers actually used marginalia to create space for themselves; see also H. Brayman Hackel, Reading Material in Early Modern England: Print, Gender and Literacy (2005).