His faults are not few. His style is prolix, obscure, and to the modern reader pedantic enough; but a comparison of his greatest work with 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 the De Jure Belli et Pacis of Grotius, it is at once evident that the later writer is indebted 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.
The following is probably a complete list of the writings of Gentili, with the places and dates of their first publication: De juris interpretibus dialogi sex (London, 1582); Lectionum et epist. quae ad jus civile pertinent libri tres (London, 1583-1584); De legationibus libri tres (London, 1585); Legal. comitiorum Oxon. actio (London, 1585-1586); De divers. temp. appellationibus (Hanau, 1586); De nascendi tempore disputatio (Witteb., 1586); Disputationum decas prima (London, 1587); Conditionum liber singularis (London, 1587); De jure belli comm. prima (London, 1588); secunda, ib. (1588-1589); tertia (1589); De injustitia bellica Romanorum (Oxon, 1590); Ad tit. de Malef, et Math, de Prof. et Med. (Hanau, 1593); De jure belli libri tres (Hanau, 1598); De armis Romanis, &c. (Hanau, 1599); De actoribus et de abusu mendacii (Hanau, 1599); De ludis scenicis epist. duae (Middleburg, 1600); Ad I. Maccabaeorum et de linguarum mistura disp. (Frankfurt, 1600); Lectiones Virgilianae (Hanau, 1600); De nuptiis libri septem (1601); In tit. si quis principi, et ad leg. Jul. maiest. (Hanau, 1604); De latin, vet. Bibl. (Hanau, 1604); De libro Pyano (Oxon, 1604); Laudes Acad. Perus. et Oxon. (Hanau, 1605); De unione Angliae et Scotiae (London, 1605); Disputationes tres, de libris jur. can., de libris jur. civ., de latinitate vet. vers. (Hanau, 1605); Regales disput. tres, de pot. regis absoluta, de unione regnorum, de vi civium (London, 1605); Hispanicae advocationis libri duo (Hanau, 1613); In tit. de verb. signif. (Hanau, 1614); De legatis in test. (Amsterdam, 1661). An edition of the Opera omnia, commenced at Naples in 1770, was cut short by the death of the publisher, Gravier, after the second volume. Of his numerous unpublished writings, Gentili complained that four volumes were lost “pessimo pontificiorum facinore,” meaning probably that they were left behind in his flight to Carniola.
Authorities.—Several tracts by the Abate Benigni in Colucci, Antichità Picene (1790); a dissertation by W. Reiger annexed to the Program of the Groningen Gymnasium for 1867; an inaugural lecture delivered in 1874 by T.E. Holland, translated into Italian, with additions by the author, by A. Saffi (1884); the preface to a new edition of the De jure belli (1877) and Studies in International Law (1898) (which see, for details as to the family and MSS. of Gentili), by the same; works by Valdarnini and Foglietti (1875), Speranza and De Giorgi (1876), Fiorini (a translation of the De jure belli, with essay, 1877), A. Saffi (1878), L. Marson (1885), M. Thamm (1896), B. Brugi (1898), T.A. Walker (an analysis of the principal works of Gentili) in his History of the Law of Nations, vol. i.(1899); H. Nézarel, in Pillet’s Fondateurs de droit international (1904); E. Agabiti (1908). See also E. Comba, in the Rivista Christiana (1876-1877); Sir T. Twiss, in the Law Review (1878); articles in the Revue de droit international (1875-1878, 1883, 1886, 1908); O. Scalvanti, in the Annali dell’ Univ. di Perugia, N.S., vol. viii. (1898).
(T. E. H.)
GENTLE (through the Fr. gentil, from Lat. gentilis, belonging to the same gens, or family), properly an epithet of one born of a “good family”; the Latin generosus, “well born” (see [Gentleman]), contrasted with “noble” on the one side and “simple” on the other. The word followed the wider application of the word “gentleman”; implying the manners, character and breeding proper to one to whom that name could be applied, courteous, polite; hence, with no reference to its original meaning, free from violence or roughness, mild, soft, kind or tender. With a physical meaning of soft to the touch, the word is used substantively of the maggot of the bluebottle fly, used as a bait by fishermen. At the end of the 16th century the French gentil was again adapted into English in the form “gentile,” later changed to “genteel.” The word was common in the 17th and 18th centuries as applied to behaviour, manner of living, dress, &c., suitable or proper to persons living in a position in society above the ordinary, hence polite, elegant. From the early part of the 19th century it has also been used in an ironical sense, and applied chiefly to those who pay an excessive and absurd importance to the outward marks of respectability as evidence of being in a higher rank in society than that to which they properly belong.
GENTLEMAN (from Lat. gentilis, “belonging to a race or gens,” and “man”; Fr. gentilhomme, Span, gentil hombre, Ital. gentil huomo), in its original and strict signification, a term denoting a man of good family, the Lat. generosus (its invariable translation in English-Latin documents). In this sense it is the equivalent of the Fr. gentilhomme, “nobleman,” which latter term has in Great Britain been long confined to the peerage (see [Nobility]); and the term “gentry” (“gentrice” from O. Fr. genterise for gentelise) has much of the significance of the Fr. noblesse or the Ger. Adel. This was what was meant by the rebels under John Ball in the 14th century when they repeated:
| “When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman?” |
Selden (Titles of Honor, 1672), discussing the title “gentleman,” speaks of “our English use of it” as “convertible with nobilis,” and describes in connexion with it the forms of ennobling in various European countries. William Harrison, writing a century earlier, says “gentlemen be those whom their race and blood, or at the least their virtues, do make noble and known.” But for the complete gentleman the possession of a coat of arms was in his time considered necessary; and Harrison gives the following account of how gentlemen were made in Shakespeare’s day: