Publication

The reprint in anastatic form of Raffaele Ajello's second monograph fills a gap that has been felt for some time. That book, which marked a decisive moment of transition in the cultural development of the Neapolitan master, anticipating the treatment of themes destined to occupy a central place in subsequent works, has had a very limited circulation so far. Printed in a few copies, it is mainly known through the version without notes which appeared, together with the republication, also without notes, of his contribution on the Carolinian codification attempt, in a volume entitled Juridical pre-enlightenment and codification attempts in the Kingdom of Naples ( Naples 1968). The reprint of the 1965 monograph in its full version today offers the opportunity to rethink the historiography of the great scholar by grasping it at a fundamental point and examining, through the notes, the dialogue he established with some of the most significant currents of legal and historian of the fifties and the first half of the sixties.

The Juridical Pre-Enlightenment constituted the second volume of a single work dedicated to the Problem of judicial and legislative reform in the Kingdom of Naples during the first half of the 18th century. In both writings there was a very close connection between the examination of abundant manuscript documentation aimed at shedding light on the events of the judiciary and the analysis of the technical and ideological devices used by the jurists to legitimize their role of social and political mediation. For this reason, even in the 1965 volume, which also revealed, compared to the first, a more marked attention to the theoretical and ideological debate of the second half of the seventeenth century and the following century, an abundant supply of primarily manuscript sources was made use of .