‘Mendacium officiosum’: Alberico Gentili's Ways of Lying

De Abusu Mendacii is a little-known work that has as its subject the legitimacy of simulation and dissimulation. It was written at the end of the 16th century by Italian thinker Alberico Gentili who fled the Pontifical State to escape punishment at the hands of the Roman Inquisition which had persecuted him for heresy. Taking refuge in London, Gentili became professor of Law at Oxford and entered into conflict with some theologians who accused him of being too autonomous in his thought with respect to religion. He defended himself against this charge by writing two pamphlets. One of them was De Abusu Mendacii in which Gentili justifies hiding the truth as a form of rightful mendacium officiosum, a kind of good and necessary lie that serves to defend and protect private life and civil community.