On April 15, UC Berkeley’s Institute of European Studies (IES) and the Department of Italian Studies hosted Professor Amedeo Arena for a lecture on his current research into transatlantic Enlightenment thought. Arena, a Full Professor of European Union Law at the University of Naples Federico II—Europe’s oldest public university—shared insights from his ongoing work on EU legal history and, more specifically for this talk, the intellectual connections between the Italian and American Enlightenments.
Arena’s lecture focused on two transatlantic exchanges between Naples and Philadelphia that bracket the era of the American Declaration of Independence—one occurring roughly a decade before, and one a decade after 1776. The first exchange centered on the relationship between Domenico Cirillo, a Neapolitan physician, botanist, and revolutionary, and John Morgan, a leading Philadelphia physician and founder of the University of Pennsylvania’s medical school. Their correspondence led to Cirillo’s nomination as a corresponding member of the American Philosophical Society (APS), the oldest learned society in the United States, founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1743.
However, a clerical error obscured this historical moment for over 250 years. When Cirillo’s nomination was recorded in 1768, his name was mistakenly entered as “Mr. Famitz”—likely due to a misinterpretation of a British consul’s letter recommending Morgan contact his “family physician,” referring to Cirillo. Arena recounted how this error effectively erased Cirillo from the APS’s records until January 3, 2023, when the Society formally recognized him as its first Italian member and corrected the historical record.
The second transatlantic connection explored in the lecture was the correspondence between Gaetano Filangieri—author of The Science of Legislation—and Benjamin Franklin. Their letters, exchanged between 1781 and 1788, coincide with a transformative period in American history marked by the Treaty of Paris and the drafting of the U.S. Constitution. Despite never meeting in person, Filangieri and Franklin developed what Arena described as a profound intellectual kinship, grounded in their shared Enlightenment ideals. Their dialogue included discussions on topics such as governance, reform, and the pursuit of happiness—a concept deeply embedded in both the American and Italian Enlightenment discourses.
Arena emphasized that these correspondences highlight the robust intellectual networks that transcended national borders in the 18th century. The “republic of letters,” as it was known, enabled the free exchange of Enlightenment ideas despite the political and geographic constraints of the time. This was particularly striking given the heavy censorship prevalent across Europe. For example, Filangieri’s Science of Legislation was initially approved by Neapolitan censors in 1780 but later restricted in post-Revolutionary Italy due to its perceived influence on revolutionary thinking.
In concluding his talk, Arena underscored how these transatlantic connections between Naples and Philadelphia not only illuminate the global reach of Enlightenment thought, but also challenge us to reconsider the interconnectedness of early modern intellectual history.