Great Jurists of the New Age
After Irnerius and Gratian, new actors appeared on the juridical scene. The next generation was dominated by the “Four Doctors,” Martinus, Bulgarus, Jacobus, and Hugo. Although legend states that the dying Irnerius chose Jacobus as his heir,[156] the men who most truly continued the work of the great master were Martinus Gosia (d.
before 1166) and Bulgarus (d. 1166). Martinus and his followers (called gosiani) and Bulgarus and his followers pursued distinct and at times conflicting approaches. Martinus and his school were more interested in testing the equitable possibilities of the ius commune-, Bulgarus and his pupils sought a more rigorous method for analysis of the formal logic OfJustinian law.During the course of the twelfth century, other jurists were prominent teachers. One of these was Rogerius, who flourished in the midtwelfth century (around 1162); another was Placentinus, who was active in his native Italy but also in the south of France, where he died in Montpellier in ∏92; still another was Pillius Medicinensis (d. after 1207), who was prominent for a number of reasons in the last decades of the twelfth century. Pillius was the first of the Bolognese professors to leave that city (he went to Modena some time after 1180 to open a school of law); he was also the most important jurist of his time to give close consideration to feudal law, and he compiled an apparatus to the Consuetudines feudorum (or Libn feudorum). Toward the end of the century Johannes Bassianus (d. 1197), a man with an extremely acute intelligence but who lived a disorderly life, taught in Bologna. Famous and much appreciated in his own right, Bassianus was the master of one of the most talented jurists of the age, Azo of Bologna (d. 1220, perhaps after 1230).[157]
Azo gave a new theoretical dimension to jurisprudence in Europe of the Middle Ages when he parted ways with an earlier doctrinal tendency to emphasize everyday happenings, use them as exemplary, or reinterpret them for the purposes of legal discussion.
Azo instead took great care not to trespass beyond the limits of the Justinian compilation; rather than muddle his discourse with references to events from his own time, he decanted to their maximum purity the legal concepts embodied in and handed on by the laws of Justinian. This aspect of his method and his thought is particularly clear in the various apparatus that he composed on passages from the Justinian texts, the Code in particular.[158] In his famous Summa Codicis Azo used schemes of classification borrowed from Ciceronian philosophy, which gave the materials he elaborated in his exegesis of the Corpus iuris civilis a firm and consistent architectonic structure.[159] Azo’s Summa Codicis was a work basic to both theoretical study and practical use of the ius commune. The enormous importance of the Summa for legal practice is clear in the somewhat disrespectful goliardic motto that circulated in scholastic and juridical circles: “Chi non ha Azzo non vada in palazzo” (If you don’t have Azo, don’t go to court).[160]Like Azo, his contemporary Hugolinus de Presbyteris (d. after 1233) was a pupil of Johannes Bassianus. Also like Azo, Hugolinus composed profuse, extensive apparatus to the Corpus iuris civilis, to the Code in particular. He went his own way, however, which meant that the two jurists’ apparatus were in competition with one another as the two men contended for supremacy. Their rivalry developed into differing schools of thought, a question to which I shall return. Legend soon intervened concerning the life and personal behavior of these two heads of schools. Odofredus, a pupil and follower of Hu- golinus, later stated with undisguised hostility that Azo was so busy teaching that he took sick only on holidays, which made it inevitable that he would die on a day when he was on vacation.[161]
Their rivalry and intellectual dissent led to fantastic tales: Hugoli- nus and Azo quarreled regularly with one another on their way to court in the palace of the podesta, and one fine day, “instigante diabolo” (at the instigation of the devil), Azo was said to have killed Hu- golinus when they met on the stairway.[162] Another legendary anecdote states that Azo’s most prominent and most loyal student, Accursius, detested Hugolinus because Accursius had discovered that his wife had had an affair with Hugolinus, and in a move to send his rival packing, Accursius pulled political strings to have Hugolinus banished from Bologna.[163]
Legend aside, there are some elements in the situation that can be documented.
It is certain that Accursius, who followed Azo’s approach but was not above picking out the best features of Hugoli- nus’s teaching, completed the more challenging work, an apparatus so vast that it was commonly called the Magna glossa. Throughout the Middle Ages, Accursius’sAf^w^/asy» surpassed all other apparatus in importance, authority, and diffusion.9.