Overdadighe mildheid

My first public lecture of this academic year will be at McGill.  I've started working on a lecture based on a paper that I have been sketching, on and off, on the general theme of regulating 'benevolence' in natural law.  It is an old Ciceronian idea from De Officiis: Too much benevolence, generosity beyond what is due, can potentially be harmful and offensive to others.  I haven't decided if this will be the lecture I will deliver, but it is a strong possibility, as I find my mind hovering over this theme (on the flip side of my previous writing on imperfect rights).

I started going through some of the notes that I accumulated this past summer from my time in the Netherlands.  One is a manuscript of a Latin translation of the Hollandsche Rechtsgeleerdheyd by van der Linden (Leiden MS. BPL XVIII 1011).  It is a useful work because the translator takes Grotius's Dutch text and reformulates it in vocabulary perhaps more familiar to a readership in classical Roman law. 

Here is van der Linden's manuscript of Grotius, Holl. Rechtsg. Book III, Chapter 2 - on gifts:

Now I find this particular chapter fascinating for a number of reasons.  Van der Linden's translation treats it as a treatise, 'De donationibus,' which was also a title in Justinian (Inst. 2.7).  The practice of gift-giving and the resulting gift economy were extraordinarily important in Roman culture (and indeed, for the imperial expansive politics that Grotius envisioned too):  

Several points in these passages are particularly noteworthy, which I'll just mention (and explore in detail later in the paper):

• Gifts (schenking) are a species of contract (van der Linden chooses to translate 'toezegging' as 'promissio' - but that is because 'promissio' is obligating, whereas 'pollicitatio' - a bare promise does not).

• Not just any contract - but a gratuitous contract of benevolence, a fundamental concept that is further developed in the Law of War and Peace.
• Nothing may be exchanged in return in a gift, as consideration.  Otherwise, it would be an innominate 'do ut des' (§6).   

Wasn't benevolence - expressed through gift-giving - a virtue?  Apparently, one could show too much of it, an 'excessive' or 'overdadighe' liberality.

One of the functions of natural law (which, Grotius seems to think, Roman law had absorbed) was to police this excessive benevolence.  He doesn't mention it specifically, but I suspect he is referring to the disagreement surrounding the Lex Fufia Caninia.

The other piece to address is Grotius's attempt to integrate the Law of the Gospel in this treatment of benevolence.  That will be on my to do list.