Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/173

Rh where meeting with the reception to which his already high reputation entitled him. He arrived at Oxford in the autumn of, with a commendatory letter from the earl of Leicester, at that time chancellor of the university, and was shortly afterwards qualiﬁed to teach by being admitted to the same degree which he had taken at Perngia. His lectures on Roman law soon became famous, and the dialogues, disputations, and commentaries, which he published henceforth in rapid succession, established his position as an accomplished civilian, of the older and severer type, and secured his appointment in to the regius professorship of civil law. It was, however, rather by an applicatiou of the old learning to the new questions suggested by the modern relations of states that his labours have produced their most lasting result. In he was consulted by lovernmeut as to the proper course to be pursued with Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador, who had been detected in plotting against Elizabeth. He chose the topic to which his attention had thus been directed as a subject for a dis- putation when Leicester aml Sir Philip Sidney visited the schools at Oxford in ; and this was six later expanded into a book, the De legutionibus libri Ires. In Alberico selected the law of war as the subject of the law disputations at the annual “ Act ” which took place in July; and in the autumn published in London the De Jurc Belli conunenlutio primu. A second and a third (L'onmwntutio followed, and the whole matter, with large additions and improvements, appeared at Hanan, in, as the De J ure Belli libri ire-s. It was doubtless in consequence of the reputation gained by these works that Gentili became henceforth more and more engaged in forensic practice, and resided chieﬂy in London, leaving his Oxford work to be partly discharged by a deputy. In he was admitted to be a member of Gray’s Inn, and in was appointed standing counsel to the king of Spain. He died 19th June , and was buried, by the side of Dr Matteo Gentili, who had followed his son to England, in the churchyard of St Helen’s, Bishopsgate. By his wife, Hester de Peigni, he left two sons and a daughter. His notes of the cases in which he was engaged for the Spaniards were posthumously published in at Hanan, as His- puuicce (ulvru'utionis libri duo. This was in accordance with his last wishes ; but his direction that the remainder of his )[SS. should be burnt was not complied with, since fifteen volumes of them found their way, at the beginning of this century, from Amsterdam to the Bodleiau library. The true history of Gentili and of his principal writings has only been ascertained quite recently, in consequence of a revived appreciation of the services which he rendered to international law. The movement to do him honour, which originated four or ﬁve years since, has in spreading through Europe encountered two curious cross—currents of opiuion,—one the ultra—Catholic, which three centuries ago ordered his name to be erased from all public docu— ments and placed his works in the Index; another the narrowly-Dutch, which is, it seems, needlessly careful of the supremacy of Grotius. Preceding writers had dealt with various international questions, but they dealt with them singly, and with a servile submission to the deci- sions of the church. It was left to Gentili to grasp as a whole the relations of states one to another, to distinguish international questions from questions with which they are more or less intimately connected, and to attempt their solution by principles entirely independent of the authority of Rome. He uses, without yielding to them implicit deference, the reasoniugs of the civil and even the canon law, but he proclaims as his real guide the J us A'at-urce, the highest common sense of mankind, by which historical lix'ejte'leiits are to be criticized, and, if necessary, set asv e. His faults are not few. His style is prolix, obscure, and to the modern reader pedantic enough; but a comparison of his greatest work wrth what had been written upon the same subject by, for instance, Belli, or Soto, or even Ayala, will show that he greatly improved upon his predecessors, not only by the fulness with which he has worked out points of detail, but also by clearly separating the law of war from martial law, and by placing the subject once for all upon a non-theological basis. If, on the other hand, the same work be compared with De Jure Belli et I’ucis of (lrotins, it is at once evident that the later writer is in- debted to the earlier, not only for a large portion of his illustrative erudition, but also for all that is commendable in the method and arrangement of the treatise.

1em

1em  GENTILLY, a town of France, in the department of the Seine, is situated on the Bievre, a short distance south of the fortiﬁcations of Paris. Its manufactures include biscuits, soap, vinegar, mustard, wax candles, buttons, leather, and pottery wares. It possesses a church of the 13th century, a lunatic asylum, a convent, a monastery, and several charitable institutions. The population in 184 6 was 10,378.  GENTZ, (1764–1832), born at Breslau, May 2, 1764, aptly and accurately described by his dis- tinguished friend Varnhagen von Euse as a writer—states- man (Schriftsteller Staatsmann). He was more than a publicist or political writer. His position was peculiar, and his career without a parellel. It is believed that no other instance can be adduced of a man exercising the same amount of inﬂuence in the conduct of public affairs, without rank or fortune, without high ofﬁce, without being a member of a popular or legislative assembly, without in fact any Osteusible means or instrumentality besules hls pen. Born in the middle class in an aristocratic country, he lived on a footing of social equality with princes and mnusters, the trusted partaker of their counsels and the chosen exponent of their policy. His fatherheld an employment in the Prussran (:lVIl servrce; his mother was an Ancillou distantly related to the states- man of that name. On his father’s promotlon to the mint