From the Feudal World to Urban Civilization

In twelfth-century towns and cities, which were growing rapidly as their permanent population increased and their inhabited space was enlarged, economic growth, market specialization, an intensification Ofinterpersonal relations, and new forms of political power produced new needs.

Its abstract and reiterated legal concepts made Roman law (which, incidentally, had strongly urban connotations) a mine of precious materials that jurists, as specialists arrogating to themselves a monop­oly on the theorization of social relations, could recuperate and reuti­lize. With Irnerius they began to do just that.

Irnerius headed a school in which the task of reviving and reconsti­tuting Justinian’s texts was carried out enthusiastically and with the participation of young and brilliant students. They worked with a sense of urgency to provide theoretical responses, and with them col­laboration and aid, to political movements and economic trends that were restructuring the city internally, refashioning its ties with the surrounding territory, and weaving a network of profitable connec­tions between one city and another.

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