Giovanni Paolo Lancellotti (Perugia, 1522 - 1590) was an Italian jurisconsult, doctor in utroque iure ("in both rights"), pertaining to the current denominated legal humanism. Its main work, entitled Institutiones iuris canonici (Venice, Comin da Trino, 1563), was reedited some forty times until 1770, both in its monographic version and as an annex to the Corpus iuris canonici (a compilation of canon law from its origins to the century XV).
Lancellotti's work, within systematic legal humanism, takes up the classical plan "people-things-actions" of the Roman didactic manuals (Institutiones de Gaius and Justinian) that adapts to pre-Tridentine canon law. Another originality is that his work is presented in concise articles, in four books, thus detaching itself from the comments of the usual decretals previously. Last but not least, it is the author's claim to present canonical matter in a logical form (schematized with arborescences), which is also the approximation of legal works influenced by the logical-rhetorical philosophy of Pierre de la Ramée and Philippe Melanchthon (Bodin, Derrer, Freige, Althusius). In spite of the relative oblivion in which the author fell from the twentieth century, his influence was notable in canonical science until the Code of 1917.
The Institutiones iuris canonici were glossed by the French canonists Jean Doujat (seventeenth century) and Toussaint Durand de Maillane (18th century), who also translated them in 1770; as well as by the famous German naturalist Christian Thomasius (Halle, 1715-1717). Bibliography
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