Bernardo Tanucci (20 February 1698 – 29 April 1783) was an Italian jurist and statesman, who brought an enlightened absolutism style of government to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies for Charles III and his son Ferdinand IV.

Biography

Early years

Bernardo Tanucci, son of Giuliano Tanucci (who was the son of Bernardo, son of Giuliano Tanucci senior), from Stia in Casentino, and of Lucrezia di Andrea Tommasi, from Strada in Casentino was born on 20 February 1698 in Stia, near Arezzo (Tuscany). Tanucci was not from a wealthy family and thus was educated, thanks to a patron, at the University of Pisa. Tanucci was appointed a professor of law there in 1725 and attracted attention by his defence of the authenticity of the Codex Pisanus of the Pandects of Justinian. When Charles, Duke of Parma, son of Philip V of Spain, who succeeded him as monarch and became Charles III, passed through Tuscany on his way to conquer the Kingdom of Naples, Cosimo III de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, encouraged him to take Tanucci with him.

Tanucci married Donna Ricciarda, daughter of Conte Giovanni Catanti, a Pisan nobleman. The marriage took place in Pisa, in the church of Santa Cecilia, the bride's parish, on 18 April 1740. The wedding was celebrated by proxy, since Tanucci had been, at the time and for a long time, in Naples, in the service of the Bourbons.

He and his wife had two children: Giulio Tanucci (died 17 April 1744 aged 3 months) and Marianna Tanucci (died 20 August 1781), wife of Giuseppe Rossi, a Pisan not of noble ancestry.

In Naples Charles appointed Tanucci councilor of state, then superintendent of posts, minister of justice in 1752, foreign minister in 1754 and finally prime minister and a marquis.

Tanucci worked at establishing for Bourbon Naples the kind of controls over the church that were effected by the Gallican church in Bourbon France: revenues of vacant bishoprics and abbeys went to the crown, superfluous convents were suppressed, tithes abolished and the acquisition of new Church property by mortmain was forbidden. Royal assent was required for the publication in Naples of papal bulls and concessions were no longer considered eternal. The status of Naples as a papal fief, dating from the time of the Hohenstaufen, was denied: the king of Naples served at the pleasure of God only. Appeals to Rome were forbidden without the royal permission. Marriage was declared a civil contract. And by the order of Charles III the Jesuits were suppressed and expelled from the Kingdom of Naples in 1767, a move in which Tanucci was in general sympathy with other ministers at the Bourbon courts, as Aranda in Spain, Choiseul in France, du Tillot in Parma, and also with Pombal in Portugal.

Works

  • Difesa seconda dell’uso antico delle Pandette [...] contro le Vindiciae del P.D. G. Grandi. Florence: appresso Bernardo Paperini. 1729.
  • Diritto della Corona di Napoli sopra Piombino (1738), Naples 1760.
  • Per la vedova Fortunata de Martino madre dei minori Antonio e Caterina Mescovischi, Da esaminarsi nella Suprema Giunta degli Abusi. s.l. 1772.

Notes

Bibliography

  • Benigni, U. (1913). Tanucci, Bernardo. Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company; a very severe review.