The School of Irnerius and the Myth of Bologna

During the eleventh century and at the start of the twelfth century, there were still few schools. Monasteries and episcopal seats were ac­tive in providing elementary and secondary schooling, but it is very unclear whether or not further instruction on a private basis was given in the house of a magister to small groups of zealous young men eager to improve their store of juridical knowledge after their basic course of studies in the “liberal arts,” in particular, in the “trivium” of grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic.

One thing is clear: one school soon stood out from the rest for its importance and its reputation. It emerged as the best because it alone concentrated exclusively on the study of law and on reading the legis­lative texts ofjustinian. These texts, which had been rediscovered and recomposed and had become the Hbri legales par excellence, enabled students to regard the law as a new science distinct from (though not separate from) the arts of the trivium, on the one hand, and theology and ethics, on the other.

This school was Irnerius’s. We know Iitde about Irnerius’s pupils. There may have been many of them, but only four have left abundant and reliable traces, either as a “group” that historians call the “Four Doctors” (although the tide of “doctor” is surely inaccurate) or as individuals. Two of the Four Doctors founded prominent schools with a methodology of their own and a unique personality; two seem simply to have been lost to memory in later tradition. The two more important jurists were Bulgarus and Martinus, men to whom later writers credit bitterly opposed positions;¹ the other two were Jacobus (legend tells us that the dying Irnerius indicated him as his true spiri­tual heir and principal successor)² and Hugo.

This first and fundamental development, which gave autonomy not only to the scientia of the law but also to the places—the scholae— in which that “science” was cultivated and transmitted, took place in Bologna.

1. On this point, see Manlio Bellomo, Saggio Sull³Universita dell^,etd del diritto comune (Catania: Giannotta, 1979; 2d ed. Rome: Il Cigno Galileo Galilei, 1992), +8-49, and the literature cited therein.

2. The Turin MS, Biblioteca Nazionale, E.I.15, fol. 7rb, related a different legend, as discovered and reported by Giacomo Pace, “ ^tGarnerius Theutonicus⁵: Nuove fonti su Imerio c i ^tquattro dottori,’ ” Rivista Intemazionale di Diritto Comune 2 (1991): 123—33, esp. 125: “Set isti quattuor de pari contendebant, et cum recedere vellet dominus Gar- nerius de Bon[onia] et ire ad domum suam, et quilibet istorum quattuor dicebat do­mino Garnerio quod dimitteret ei scolas. Ipse vero, cavens ne vinceretur aliquis eorum, ultima die quo legitur dixit: ^tBurgams hos aureum, Martinus copia legum, Hug[o] mens legum, Jacobus id quod ego.’ Et hoc dixit volens innuere quod quilibet faceret scolas suas, et ipsi ita fecerunt.” Evidently, Irnerius attempted to avoid designating an intellectual successor, and his four most famous students fought among themselves to replace him in his school—unsuccessfully, however, as Irnerius’s school closed defini­tively, and its place was taken by the four schools of his students.

3. I have made ample use of my own previous writings in this chapter, and I refer the reader to them for both the topics treated here and sources and bibliography not specifically given here: Manlio Bellomo, Aspetti dell’insegnamentogiuridico nelle Uni- versitd medievali, vol. ι, Le “quaestiones disputatae”: Saggi (Reggio Calabria: Parallel© 38,1974); Bellomo, Saggio SullUniversitd nell^,etd del diritto comune-, Bellomo, “Legere, repetere, disputare: I tre impegni del giurista nelle scuole Universitarie medievali (secoli XII-XV),” inXVe CongresInternational des SciencesHistoriques, Bucharest 10-17 August 1980, Rapports, 3 vols.

2.