From the eleventh century, the improved political and economic conditions created a more favourable environment for cultural development in medieval Europe.

At the same time, a renewed interest in law was prompted by the growth of trade, commerce and industry, and the increasing secularism and worldliness of urban business life.

The legal revival began in Northern Italy.

By the end of the eleventh century the antiqui, the jurists dedicated to the study of ancient Germanic sources, had been superseded by the moderni, who were interested primarily in the synthesis of Roman law and Lombard customary law. While the antiqui regarded Roman law as a system subordinate and supplementary to Lombard law, the moderni sought to rely on Roman law as a basis for the improvement and development of native law.

Towards the end of the eleventh century, Roman law studies experienced a remarkable resurgence. It is difficult to assign a single reason for this development, although some writers place central importance on the discovery of a manuscript in Pisa during the late eleventh century. The material contained the full text of Justinian’s Digest that had remained largely unknown throughout the early Middle Ages (when the Florentines captured Pisa in 1406 the manuscript was transferred to Florence and hence it is designated Littera Florentina or Codex Florentinus).

A second manuscript seems to have been unearthed around the same time but has since been lost. This is referred to as Codex Secundus and is believed to have furnished the basis for the copies of the Digest produced at Bologna. The rediscovery of the Digest occurred at a time when there was a great need for a legal system that could meet the requirements of the rapidly changing social and commercial life. The Roman law of Justinian had essential attributes that offered hope for a unified law that could in time replace the multitude of local customs: it possessed an authority as a legacy of the ancient imperium Romanum and existed in a book form written in Latin, the lingua franca of Western Europe.

The revival of interest in Roman law had been also fostered by the conflict between the Empire and the Papacy, which was from the outset a conflict of political theories for which the rival parties sought justification and support in the precepts of the law. Roman law attracted the attention of secular scholars seeking intellectual grounds for refuting the papal doctrine of the final supremacy of the Church in temporal affairs. At the same time, the emperors were receptive to this law because its doctrine of a universal law (founded on a grand imperial despotism) provided the best ideological means to support the theory that the emperor, as heir of the Roman emperors, stood at the pinnacle of the feudal system.^[693] The supporters of the Papacy argued that as spiritual power was superior to secular power, the Pope was supreme ruler of all Christendom and temporal affairs were subject to the final control of the Church. Scholars supporting the papal party were encouraged to search the ancient texts for legal authority that could support this claim and to develop a science of law on this basis. Opponents of the papal views adopted the same rigorous exploration for supporting materials. Relying upon the despotic principle of Roman law, they argued that the power of the state was absolute and could override the opposition of any group within the state. Roman law was thus construed to uphold secular absolutism—a view utterly at variance with the papal claims to primacy. Through the interpretation of Roman political and legal princi­ples, a new political theory was developed in the course of time that hinged upon the idea of a secular and independent sovereignty founded on law.