Pietro Giannone

Pietro Giannone was an Italian philosopher, historian and jurist born in 1676 in Ischitella in the Kingdom of Naples. He came to Naples at eighteen to study law but became better known for his writing, and spent twenty years on the Storia civile del regno di Napoli, published in 1723, in which he traced the rise of Neapolitan law and government and took the side of the civil power against the Roman Catholic hierarchy. He was the first to deal systematically with the question of Church and State, and the conflict this caused led to his excommunication, the placing of his history on the Index of Prohibited Books and his flight to Vienna, then Venice and Geneva. He was seized in 1735 and imprisoned for twelve years until his death in 1748.