Community (Custom) vs. State (Law): The Debate about Property in the Papal States in the 18th – 19th Centuries

During the 18th century, an increasingly strong individualistic attitude in the way of understanding the relationship between man and the tangible world spread throughout Europe. The legal institution which, more than any other, suffered from the effects of this reductionism was the Property as victim of incredible compression in comparison to medieval world. The exclusive model that the new Enlightenment and the bourgeois mentality wanted to adopt was the individual Property, to the detriment of all those forms of possession documented in the Middle Ages. The present study intends to investigate, in the geographical context of the Papal States, the great juridical dispute between the individualistic model – endorsed by the Sacred Legislator – and that of a collectivistic nature defended by the Community.