Bartolo of Sassoferrato Quotes
Government by one man: He is called a lord if he inclines to a good and common end; a tyrant if he is inclined to pursue bad or merely personal ends.
Bartolo was the most famous legal expert of his day and for many years thereafter as he died at the age of 44—the height of his career. In Italy, Spain and other nations of Europe there were statutes passed that said if there was no precedent in Roman Law, the writings of Bartolo should dictate the law.
Bartolo of Sassoferrato, 1313-1357, Italian Law Professor, Treatise on City Government, ~1330
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Nine years later he was responsible for Napoleon’s election as Consul.
At the time of this statement most people thought that Bush was joking. But by the end of his Presidency many looked back on the quote and thought that Bush had such preferences. He unilaterally took the country into the Iraq War and assumed Presidential Powers that no other president had ever attempted. Most serious, his administration actually took the formal legal position that the President did not have to obey the law if he unilaterally thought that it was not in the nation’s interest from the point of view of the Commander in Chief. So many debate whether this quotation was a light hearted joke of a harbinger of his real feelings about the Presidency.
Honore Gabriel Victor Requiti. The French King had just opened the French National Assembly which contained deputies (delegates) from the clergy, the nobility and the people. The King had made what some deputies thought was a very constructive and responsible speech opening the assembly. Mirabeau observed that as long as there was an absolute monarch in place, even a benign one. It was the presence of a monarch itself that was evil.
The Priest was the right wing demagogic radio host of his day. Virulently anti-Semitic and anti-Black, he was threatened with excommunication by the Catholic Church, which finally ordered him to cease us weekly radio show and stop the political hate.
Arguing the need to limit the power of the legislature:
Soon he had the power of a dictator but he didn’t force his will on the vast majority of the Cubans. His decrees made all the wealthy and the cronies of the dictator Batista outraged and most of them left Cuba. He was a dynamic demagogue and the people handed him dictatorial powers which he did not reject. He was so popular that he was the only leader in the Americas who would give 4 hour speeches and move through the streets without any bodyguards until the United States and dissident expatriates tried to assassinate him. With all that popularity, none the less he would not allow open criticism of his regime and jailed many political opponents. So he indeed became a dictator but never needed the machine gun to maintain power.
This is the argument—an essence of Fascism—of every dictator from Julius Caesar onward. See {640792} for more of his views on dictators.
Bartolus de Saxoferrato was an Italian law professor and one of the most prominent continental jurists of Medieval Roman Law. He belonged to the school known as the commentators or postglossators. The admiration of later generations of civil lawyers is shown by the adage nemo bonus íurista nisi bartolista — no one is a good jurist unless he is a Bartolist (i.e. a follower of Bartolus).
