La giustizia criminale a Mantova in età asburgica: il Supremo Consiglio di Giustizia (1750-1786)

This research is pivot on the role of the most important Court in Mantova during Hapsburg Age, in the territory called ‘Lombardia Austriaca’. The Supremo Consiglio di Giustizia was established in 1750 by Maria Theresa, and abolished in 1786 (togheter with Senato di Milano) due to the legislation of Joseph II. Throughout Enlightenment, the Supremo Consiglio was the competent Court for crime subject to death penalty, jail, galley, for lawsuit of appeal, and settled the recurring claim of pardon (high political level). After a summary of the ‘ancestors’ of Supremo Consiglio (Rota e Senato di Mantova), this work is based on unreleased archive documents preserved in State’s Archive of Mantova. The first section is dedicated to the composition of the Court (designation to role, reforms, biographical sketch), the second one (‘static section’) concerns crimes and pertaining sanctions (statistics, type of offence, mitigating circumstances, aggravating factors; the third (‘dynamic section’) aspires to rebuild the criminal trial in Mantova from 1750 until 1786. The instruments of this work are criminal sentences delivered by inferior judges or Supreme Court (main source), ‘practicae criminales’ and ‘tractatus’ (composed by scholars of ius commune) and ‘collections of decisiones’ written by the most influential judges of European Supreme Court. Through the criminal procedure ‘labyrinth’, this research observes every step of the inquiry against the suspect, analysing process (‘inquisitive model’), and studying gather proof instruments, with a focus on the ‘queen of the proof’, the torture. The absence of a well-definite and codified criminal procedure was the challenge, that is trying to deduce the ‘plain’ (for crime in general) and the ‘special’ procedure (for ‘atrociora’) in criminal trial. The result is a new ‘tile’, part of the ‘mosaic’ of criminal legal history in ‘Lombardia Austriaca’ between Ancien Régime and Enlightenment.