Fabio Albergati, Bodin, Equity, and the Surviving Billingbear Book
Topic: Fabio Albergati, Bodin, Equity, and the Surviving Billingbear Book
Research result
The local workbook identifies English Heritage object 81035076 as Fabio Albergati, Dei discorsi politici, Rome, 1602, leather quarto, half-calf binding, marked both for the 1780 BRO list and the Audley End comparison. The exact title announces its purpose: in five books it “reproves the political doctrine of Gio. Bodino” and defends Aristotle. albergati_title_p4.png. Full public scan.
This is a major addition to the intellectual profile of the library. It is not just another political treatise: it is an extended, adversarial reading of Jean Bodin, organized around definitions of family, citizen, monarchy, sovereignty, offices, forms of republic, law, justice, and equity.
The lead-rule passage: a more complicated legal argument
On printed p. 246, Albergati reports Bodin's comparison between an inflexible rule and the leaden Lesbian rule, which bends to the stone. The reported position says judges adapt laws to proposed cases according to differences of persons, times, and places. Albergati immediately identifies the danger: if the judge bends and rebends the rule at will, he becomes moderatore, & arbitro delle leggi—moderator and arbiter of the laws—when he should remain their minister.
albergati_lesbian_rule_p257.png.
On the following page Albergati makes the distinction more exact. If non-foundational laws are bent by judges “per rispetto dell'equità,” that operation is common to every government that uses written laws. Equity is not denied; what is denied is Bodin's effort to make pliability the special form of one constitution or to license arbitrary judicial reshaping.
Folger comparison: Measure for Measure
The comparison belongs at the level of the play's constitutional problem, not as a claim that a single image was copied. Folger Measure for Measure 1.3.20–32 makes the Duke describe fixed but unenforced laws:
DUKE
We have strict statutes and most biting laws,
The needful bits and curbs to headstrong weeds,
Which for this fourteen years we have let slip,
Even like an o'ergrown lion in a cave
That goes not out to prey. ...
Dead to infliction, to themselves are dead,
And liberty plucks justice by the nose,
The baby beats the nurse, and quite athwart
Goes all decorum.
Angelo then presents himself as the impersonal instrument of awakened law, Measure for Measure 2.2.117–20:
ANGELO
The law hath not been dead, though it hath slept.
Those many had not dared to do that evil
If the first that did th' edict infringe
Had answered for his deed. Now 'tis awake.
Albergati's discussion helps formulate the play's exact dilemma: laws cannot be infinitely pliable, but their application still encounters equity, persons, times, and places; a magistrate who claims merely to serve law may in practice become its arbiter. This is especially valuable beside the already documented Botero chapters on magistrates, disguise, justice, and princely mercy.
Research program opened by the object
- Collate Albergati's criticisms of Bodin by subject—citizen, sovereignty, mixed government, magistrate, written law, equity—with Neville's Advice and parliamentary positions.
- Compare the division of powers in Albergati, Botero, and Measure for Measure: legislator, prince, magistrate, judge, and subject.
- Image object
81035076, especially printed pp.246–248, for annotations and signs of use. - Search the Billingbear list for Bodin himself and for other anti-Bodinian or Aristotelian political books. The argumentative pair may matter more than either title in isolation.
Source control
The scan and object record match author, title, city, date, and format. They do not yet prove lifetime acquisition or reading by Neville. The Shakespeare comparison uses the Folger TEI/TXT corpus, with Folger line anchors preserved.