Dei delitti e delle pene

4to (mm. 203x145). Pages 104, [2]. Signatures: A-N4 χ1. Bound in a 19th-century French half red morocco binding, with marbled paper boards, spine with four raised bands adorned with gilt decorations and title, marbled endpapers and edges. Within the endpapers, there is a loose sheet penned by a 19th-century hand containing an excerpt against torture from Voltaire's Ode à la verité. The title page bears the ownership signature of one “C. Minoret”. The title page is slightly stained, with uniform light browning and scattered foxing, yet it remains an excellent copy with wide margins.

First edition (one of the rare copies containing the final errata leaf with twenty-one corrections) of the most significant and renowned work of the Italian Enlightenment, which upon its appearance was met with enthusiastic acclaim throughout Europe. For prudential reasons, the author's name does not appear in the text, which, indeed, was placed on the Index of Prohibited Books by a decree issued on 3 February 1766. Following the first Livorno edition, the work was reprinted numerous times, often with false places of publication (Munich, Lausanne, Haarlem, etc.), in editions of varying accuracy and legitimacy—some of which are counterfeits of counterfeits—testifying to its immense impact and the challenges it faced in dissemination. Through translations into all the principal languages of the time, Dei delitti e delle pene came to influence, directly or indirectly, Catherine of Russia, Joseph II, Leopold II, and the legislators of both the American and French revolutions.

In this treatise, Beccaria vehemently criticizes the prevailing legislation and the treatment of prisoners, particularly the abhorrent yet widespread practice of torture, rejecting wholesale much of the preceding legal tradition and centering his discourse on the respect for individual rights, particularly the so-called natural rights, such as the right to liberty and property. In accordance with the rationalistic and utilitarian ideas of the Enlightenment, which he originally combines with a profound love for humanity, Beccaria argues that the fundamental tool to eradicate privileges and abuses committed in favor of the few is the rationalization of law through legislation: a general and unequivocal law that governs clearly and impartially. The first and most important step in this direction is to separate law and religion, thereby promoting the secular nature of law and fostering religious tolerance. In this sense, Beccaria distinctly delineates the difference between crime and sin, criticizing capital punishment as an ineffective deterrent and theorizing the educational and rehabilitative value of punishment.

Cesare Beccaria was born in Milan to a noble family of Pavia origin. After completing his studies at the Jesuit College Farnesiano in Parma and at the University of Pavia, where he graduated in 1758, he had a violent disagreement with his father due to his infatuation with the daughter of a lieutenant colonel. Struck by the reading of Montesquieu's Lettres persanes (he himself spoke of a “conversion”), he decided to devote himself to philosophy. Together with the brothers Pietro and Alessandro Verri (the latter had just become an advocate “protector of prisoners”), he was among the founders of the Accademia dei Pugni in 1762 and a contributor to the journal Il Caffè. The role that the Verri brothers played in the genesis and drafting of Dei delitti e delle pene cannot be underestimated. After the condemnation of the book, in 1766 Beccaria undertook a brief journey to Paris, where he was received with great enthusiasm by the intellectual community. Upon returning to Milan, in 1768 he was appointed professor of cameral sciences at the Palatine Schools. After two years of teaching, in 1771 he requested and obtained the position of counsellor of the Supreme Council of Economy. In the following years, as a high-ranking official of the Habsburg administration, he actively sought to introduce new Enlightenment-inspired reforms. He died in Milan on 28 November 1794.