Political career of Silvio Berlusconi Political career of Silvio Berlusconi The political career of Silvio Berlusconi began in 1994, when Berlusconi entered politics for the first time serving intermittent terms as Prime Minister of Italy from 1994 to 1995, 2001 to 2006 and 2008 to 2011, his career was racked with controversies and trials; amongst these was his failure to honour his promise to sell his personal assets in Mediaset, the largest television broadcaster network in Italy, in order to dispel any perceived conflicts of interest. In the early 1990s, the five pro-western governing parties, Christian Democracy ("Democrazia Cristiana"), the Italian Socialist Party, the Italian
Droit du seigneur of the "right of first night" with money payment as an alternative. According to Howarth, this suggests that "droit du seigneur" was a familiar notion to people at that time, which he traces back to Boece. The Jesuit hagiographical work Acta Sanctorum (Acts of the Saints), published from 1643 onwards, recorded the existence of "jus primae noctis" in its biographies of St Margaret and St Forannan. English lexicographer Thomas Blount recorded the "right" as a medieval custom of some English manors in "Fragmenta Antiquitatis" in 1679. French philosopher Montesquieu referred to the practice in The Spirit of the Laws (1748),