complishments of Alberico procured him the friendship of such men as Walsingham, Sir Philip Sidney, Bodley, Saville, Henry Wotton, the Paulets, the Sherleys, the Earl of Leicester, and the Earl of Essex. In his exuberant literary activity we may distinguish four periods, viz. (1) of his polemic against the school of Cujas, (2) of his tractates and disputations upon questions of civil and international law, (3) of his controversies on theological and moral questions, and (4) of his disquisitions on politics. His enduring influence has been exercised through the writings of the second period, and by the teaching which accompanied it. There can be no doubt that, coming as he did from the original seat of civilian learning, and bringing with him traditions handed down from master to pupil in unbroken series since the days of Irnerius, he gave a new impulse to the study of Roman law, at a time when, as we are told, ‘the books of the civil and canon law were set aside to be devoured with worms as savouring too much of popery.’ He is described by a contemporary as one ‘who by his great industrie hath quickened the dead bodie of the civill law.’ The College of Advocates of that day was largely recruited from his pupils, many of whom became eminent in their profession. His teaching left its traces on John Selden, nor can it be an accident that in the generation which must have felt his influence Oxford produced two such Romanists as Sir Arthur Duck and Richard Zouch. Still more important were the services of Gentili to the law of nations, which he was the first to place upon a foundation independent of theological differences, and to develope systematically with a wealth of illustration, historical, legal, biblical, classical, and patristic, of which subsequent writers have availed themselves to a much greater extent than might be inferred from their somewhat scanty acknowledgments of indebtedness. His principal contributions to the science are contained in the ‘De Legationibus,’ the ‘De Jure Belli,’ and the ‘Advocatio Hispanica.’ The first of these was the best work upon embassy which had appeared up to the date of its publication. The last is a collection of arguments on questions of prize law, especially valuable as being much earlier in date than anything else of the kind which has been preserved to us. The ‘De Jure Belli’ is a vast improvement on the treatises even of Pierino Belli and Ayala on the same subject. In it Gentili combines for the first time the practical discussions of the catholic theologians with the theory of natural law which had been mainly worked out by protestants. Identifying the ‘Jus Naturæ’ with the consent of the majority of nations, and looking for its evidences to the writings of philosophers, to the Bible, and to the more generally applicable rules of the Roman law, he addresses himself to the novel and difficult task of collecting, criticising, and systematising the rules for the conduct of warfare. Nor does the author confine himself to the discussion of those rules in the abstract. It has been truly observed that the book may ‘be regarded as a legal commentary on the events of the sixteenth century, dealing, from the point of view of public law, with all the great questions debated between Charles V and Francis I, between Flanders and Spain, between Italy and her oppressors.’ The three books of the ‘De Jure Belli’ supply the framework and much of the materials of the first and third books of the ‘De Jure Belli et Pacis’ of Grotius; and it may well be questioned whether the additional matter which forms the second book of the latter work is not too important to be fitly introduced as a mere digression in a treatise on belligerent rights. The marvellous literary success of Grotius long obscured the fame of his predecessor, but in 1875 renewed attention began to be paid to the achievements of Gentili. Committees were formed, alike in his native and in his adopted country, to do him honour; inquiries were instituted which resulted in the ascertainment of many long-forgotten details of his career; a handsome monument was placed in St. Helen's Church as near as might be to his last resting-place; and his greatest work was re-edited at Oxford.
The following is probably a complete list of his writings: 1. ‘De Juris Interpretibus Dialogi Sex,’ London, 1582, 4to; reprinted London, 1584 and 1585, 8vo, and in Panciroli's ‘De Claris Leg. interpr.’ 2. ‘Lectionum et Epistolarum quæ ad Jus Civile pertinent Libri I–IV,’ London, 1583–7, 8vo. 3. ‘De Legationibus Libri III,’ London, 1585 (two editions), 4to; Hanau, 1594 and 1607, 8vo. 4. ‘Legalium Comitiorum Oxoniensium Actio,’ London, 1585, 8vo. 5. ‘De Diversis Temporum Appellationibus,’ Wittenberg, 1586, 8vo; Hanau, 1604, 4to, and 1607, 8vo; Wittenberg, 1646, 8vo. 6. ‘De Nascendi Tempore Disputatio,’ Wittenberg, 1586, 8vo. 7. ‘Disputationum Decas Prima,’ London, 1587, 8vo. 8. ‘Conditionum Liber Singularis,’ London, 1587, 8vo, and 1588, 4to. 9. ‘De Jure Belli Commentatio Prima,’ London, 1588, 4to; ‘Commentatio Secunda,’ 1588–9; ‘Commentatio Tertia,’ 1589; ‘Commentationes I et II,’ Leyden, 1589, 4to; ‘Commentationes Tres,’ London, 1589, 8vo; ‘De Jure Belli Libri Tres,’ Hanau, 1598, 1604,
