7.3.1 The Glossators

The principal centre of Roman law studies in Italy was the newly founded (c. 1084) University of Bologna, the first modern European university where law was a major subject.^[694] By the close of the thirteenth century, a number of similar schools had been established at Mantua, Piacenza, Modena, Parma and other cities of Northern and Central Italy, as well as in Southern France.

The work of interpretation was closely connected with the Bolognese jurists’ methods of teaching and performed by means of short notes (glossae) explaining difficult terms or phrases in a text and providing the necessary cross-references and reconciliations without which the text would be unusable.

Apart from the glosses, several other types of juristic literature were developed, partly from the teaching of the Corpus Iuris Civilis at the law schools. Some deal with the issues in the order in which they are found in Justinian’s legislation (ordo legum), such as the commenta or lecturae, reports written down by assistants or experienced students and sometimes revised by the teacher himself.^[698] Another form of literature is the written record of a quaestio disputata, an exercise in which a teacher posed a question, either a theoretical one or one derived from legal practice, and his students offered opposing views.

The interpretation and analysis of Justinian's legislative works was the exclusive preoccupation of the Bolognese jurists until the late thirteenth century. Among the successors of Irnerius, the most notable were Bulgarus,^[701] Martinus Gosia,^[702] Jacobus and Ugo (renowned as the ‘four doctors of Bologna’), Azo, Rogerius, Placentinus, Vacarius, John Bassianus, Odofredus and Accursius. Azo became famous for his influential work on Justinian’s Code, known as Summa Codicis or Summa Aurea.^[703] In the late twelfth century, Rogerius founded a law school at Montpellier in France (probably together with Placentinus) and this institution became an important centre of legal learning.

The greatest of the late Glossators was the Florentine Franciscus Accursius, a pupil of Azo’s, who dominated the law school of Bologna during the first half of the thirteenth century. Accursius produced the famous Glossa Ordinaria or Magna Glossa, an extensive collection or apparatus of glosses from earlier jurists covering the entire Justinianic codification and supplemented by his own annotations.^[704] The Glossa Ordinaria both summarised and made obsolete the whole mass of glossatorial writings from the preceding generations of jurists. It represented the culmination of the Glossators’ work and gained rapid acceptance in Italy and other parts of Europe as the standard commentary on Justinian’s texts, providing guid­ance for those engaged in the teaching and practice of law.^[705] The Glossa Ordinaria was regularly published with editions of the Corpus Iuris Civilis, so that they were received together throughout the Continent. With the publication of Accursius’s Great Gloss, the contribution of the School of the Glossators to the revival of Roman law ceased but their methods were still applied in the teaching of law at Bologna and elsewhere for a long time.

The Glossators’ approach to Roman law is characterised by its lack of historical perspective. Neither the fact that Justinian’s codification had been compiled more than 500 years before their own time, nor the fact that it comprised extracts of an even earlier date meant much to them. Instead, they perceived the Corpus Iuris Civilis as one body of authoritative texts and paid little attention to the fact that the law actually in force was very different from the system contained in Justinian’s texts.