Filosofia e diritto della schiavitù nel Mediterraneo rinascimentale. Giovanni Pontano, De obedientia III, 8-10

In the third book of the treatise De obedientia (1470), the Neapolitan-Aragonese humanist Giovanni Pontano addresses the question of slavery with considerable moral and doctrinal intensity. From the interplay between his observation of socio-economic reality ‒ as reflected in the attention devoted to legal sources and to differing cultural and social responses ‒ and his critical engagement with the doctrines of several ancient authors, most notably Aristotle, Seneca, and Augustine, there emerges a nuanced and complex position on the political and moral plane. Pontano acknowledges the existence of the phenomenon without explicitly endorsing it, and his stance provides a sufficiently representative illustration of the views held on the matter within Italian Humanism as a whole.