Mourning in the Athenaeum, Professor Luigi Labruna passed away.

Luigi Labruna, professor emeritus of Roman law at the University of Frederick, an influential scholar, an undisputed master of many generations of jurists and a leading figure in Neapolitan political and cultural life, has passed away.

Born in Naples on May 9, 1937, his career took place in Camerino - where he was first Dean and then Rector - and then in Naples, where he also headed first the Department of Roman Law and History of Romanistic Science at the University of Naples Federico II and then the Faculty of Law for a double term, from 1993 to 2002. Ordinary member of the Accademia Pontaniana in Naples and the National Society of Sciences, Letters and Arts in Naples.

President of the National University Council for a decade (1997-2007) and of the National Committee for Legal and Political Sciences of the National Research Council, he has taken part in numerous other councils, scientific and administrative, not only Italian, including, most recently, the Board of Directors of the Girolamini Library and Monumental Complex.

Gold Medal of Merit in Culture and Science; Medal of Scientific Merit of the Legal Faculty of the University of Göttingen; Grand Officer of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic; Official Knight of Merit of the Polish Republic.

An eclectic personality, his entire academic education and life was marked by a convinced openness to international exchanges. A student of the Neapolitan School of Romanistics (he was always linked to his Master, Antonio Guarino) he perfected his studies in Germany at the Seminar für Römisches Recht of the University of Hamburg, directed by Prof. Max Kaser, as a scholarship holder of the Alexander-von-Humboldt-Stiftung in the early 1960s. In the 1980s and until the early 1990s, he also taught at the Faculty of Law and Economics at the University of Nice and then at the Faculty of Law at the University of Alexandria in Egypt. Awarded an honorary doctorate by the Universities of Franche-Comté of Besançon; of Warsaw; of Toruń; of Bonn; Laval of Quebec; and of Buenos Aires. Huésped de honor of the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Member of the National Commission for the Spread of Italian Culture Abroad; Académie International de Droits Comparés; Comité Académico y Docente del "Instituto de Derecho Romano y Cultura Clásica" de la Universidad Católica de La Plata (Argentina).

To his farsightedness and happy intuitions we owe the creation of the "Gérard Boulvert Interuniversity Consortium for the Study of European Legal Civilization and the History of its Systems," created to counter the difficulties in supporting research and young people that Italian universities have had to face since 2000 and which has seen the participation - over the years - of the Universities of Naples Federico II, Camerino, Catanzaro, Enna Kore, Lecce, Reggio Calabria, Roma Sapienza, and Roma Tor Vergata.

He was also responsible for the establishment in 1990 of the Gérard Boulvert International Romanist Prize: dedicated to his friend and French colleague who died prematurely, now in its 13th edition, it is aimed at rewarding the best first work, monographic in nature, concerning Roman law and the legal institutions of classical antiquity.

Director of numerous Scientific Collections and author of multiple monographs and scholarly articles, in recent decades his critical gaze turned to civil society through editorials (le Refole) published in the main city newspapers, the Corriere del Mezzogiorno, Il Mattino and most recently Repubblica Napoli, through which he delivered his disenchanted reading of major events to all of us, never failing in his rectitude and his function as a Master. A great loss to the scholarly community.

The Frederick community gathers movedly around his family, students and colleagues all.