Bernardo Tanucci

Bernardo Tanucci (20 February 1698 – 29 April 1783) was an Italian statesman, who brought enlightened government to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies for Charles III and his son Ferdinand IV.

Born of a poor family in Stia, near Arezzo (Tuscany), Tanucci was educated, thanks to a patron, at the University of Pisa. Tanucci was appointed a professor of law there in 1725 and attracted attention by his defence of the authenticity of the Codex Pisanus of the Pandects of Justinian. When Charles, Duke of Parma, son of Philip V of Spain, who succeed him as monarch and became Charles III, passed through Tuscany on his way to conquer the Kingdom of Naples, Cosimo III de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, encouraged him to take Tanucci with him. In Naples Charles appointed him at first councillor of state, then superintendent of posts, minister of justice in 1752, foreign minister in 1754 and finally prime minister and a marquis.

As prime minister Tanucci was most zealous regalist in establishing the supremacy of a modernized State over the Catholic Church, and in abolishing the feudal privileges of Papacy and the nobility in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Governing under the principles of enlightened absolutism, he restricted the jurisdiction of the bishops, eliminated medieval privilege, and closed convents and monasteries and reduced the taxes to be forwarded to the pontifical Curia. These reforns were sanctioned in a Concordat signed with the Papacy in 1741, the application of which, however, went far beyond the intentions of the Holy See.

For the reform of the laws Tanucci instituted a commission of learned jurists with instructions to create a new legal code, the Codice Caroline, which was, however, not put into force. When Charles of Naples became Charles III of Spain in 1759, Tanucci was made president of the council of regency instituted for the nine-year-old Ferdinand IV, who even when he reached his majority preferred to leave the government in Tanucci's hands, constantly overseen from Spain by Charles III.

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