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The scholars of the 11th- and 12th-century legal schools in
Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...
,
France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...
and
Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...
are identified as glossators in a specific sense. They studied
Roman law Roman law is the law, legal system of ancient Rome, including the legal developments spanning over a thousand years of jurisprudence, from the Twelve Tables (), to the (AD 529) ordered by Eastern Roman emperor Justinian I. Roman law also den ...
based on the '' Digesta'', the ''
Codex The codex (: codices ) was the historical ancestor format of the modern book. Technically, the vast majority of modern books use the codex format of a stack of pages bound at one edge, along the side of the text. But the term ''codex'' is now r ...
'' of
Justinian Justinian I (, ; 48214 November 565), also known as Justinian the Great, was Roman emperor from 527 to 565. His reign was marked by the ambitious but only partly realized ''renovatio imperii'', or "restoration of the Empire". This ambition was ...
, the ''Authenticum'' (an abridged Latin translation of selected constitutions of Justinian, promulgated in Greek after the enactment of the ''Codex'' and therefore called '' Novellae''), and his law manual, the '' Institutiones Iustiniani'', compiled together in the '' Corpus Iuris Civilis''. (This title is itself only a sixteenth-century printers' invention.) Their work transformed the inherited ancient texts into a living tradition of
medieval Roman law Medieval Roman law is the continuation and development of ancient Roman law that developed in the European Late Middle Ages. Based on the ancient text of Roman law, '' Corpus iuris civilis'', it added many new concepts, and formed the basis of the ...
. The glossators conducted detailed text studies that resulted in collections of explanations. For their work they used a method of study unknown to the Romans themselves, insisting that contradictions in the legal material were only apparent. They tried to harmonize the sources in the conviction that for every legal question only one binding rule exists. Thus they approached these legal sources in a
dialectic Dialectic (; ), also known as the dialectical method, refers originally to dialogue between people holding different points of view about a subject but wishing to arrive at the truth through reasoned argument. Dialectic resembles debate, but the ...
al way, which is a characteristic of medieval
scholasticism Scholasticism was a medieval European philosophical movement or methodology that was the predominant education in Europe from about 1100 to 1700. It is known for employing logically precise analyses and reconciling classical philosophy and Ca ...
. They sometimes needed to invent new concepts not found in Roman law, such as half-proof (evidence short of full proof but of some force, such as a single witness). In other medieval disciplines, for example
theology Theology is the study of religious belief from a Religion, religious perspective, with a focus on the nature of divinity. It is taught as an Discipline (academia), academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itse ...
and
philosophy Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...
, glosses were also made on the main authoritative texts. In the
Greek language Greek (, ; , ) is an Indo-European languages, Indo-European language, constituting an independent Hellenic languages, Hellenic branch within the Indo-European language family. It is native to Greece, Cyprus, Italy (in Calabria and Salento), south ...
, γλῶσσα (''glossa'') means "tongue" or "language." Originally, the word was used to denote an explanation of an unfamiliar word, but its scope gradually expanded to the more general sense of "commentary". The glossators used to write in the margins of the old texts (''glosa marginalis'') or between the lines (''glosa interlinearis'' - interlinear glosses). Later these were gathered into large collections, first copied as separate books, but also quickly written in the margins of the legal texts. The medieval copyists at
Bologna Bologna ( , , ; ; ) is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region in northern Italy. It is the List of cities in Italy, seventh most populous city in Italy, with about 400,000 inhabitants and 150 different nationalities. Its M ...
developed a typical script to enhance the legibility of both the main text and the glosses. The typically Bolognese script is called the Littera Bononiensis. Accursius's '' Glossa ordinaria'', the final standard redaction of these glosses, contains around 100,000 glosses. Accursius worked for decades on this task. There exists no critical edition of his glosses. In the older historiography of the medieval ''learned law'', the view developed that after the standard gloss had become fixed a generation of so-called '' commentators'' started to take over from the glossators. In fact, the early medieval legal scholars, too, wrote commentaries and lectures, but their main effort was indeed creating glosses. Most of the older glosses are accessible only in medieval manuscripts: modern editions of only a few manuscripts exist. The main microfilm collections of glossed legal manuscripts are at the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History in Frankfurt am Main, at the universities of Munich, Würzburg, Milan, Leyden and Berkeley.


People

*
Irnerius Irnerius ( – after 1125), sometimes referred to as ''lucerna juris'' ("lantern of the law"), was an Italian jurist, and founder of the School of Glossators and thus of the tradition of medieval Roman Law. He taught the newly recovered Roman ...
* Four Doctors of Bologna ** Bulgarus ** Martinus Gosia ** Jacobus de Boragine ** Hugo de Porta Ravennate * Placentinus * Azo of Bologna * Accursius * Franciscus Accursius * Joannes Bassianus * Tancred of Bologna * Bernard of Botone


See also

* Decretalist *
Decretist In the history of canon law Canon law (from , , a 'straight measuring rod, ruler') is a set of ordinances and regulations made by ecclesiastical jurisdiction, ecclesiastical authority (church leadership) for the government of a Christian organi ...
*
Postglossator The postglossators or commentators formed a European legal school which arose in Italy and France in the fourteenth century. They form the highest point of development of medieval Roman law. The school of the '' glossators'' in Bologna lost its ...


External links


Max-Planck-Institut für europäische Rechtsgeschichte, Frankfurt am Main

Stephan Kuttner Institute for Medieval Canon Law, Munich

Robbins Collection, School of Law, Boalt Hall, University of California at Berkeley

''The Roman Law Library'' by Professor Yves Lassard and Alexandr Koptev

Glossator: Practice and Theory of the Commentary
* Gabor Hamza: Accursius és az európai jogtudomány kezdetei. /Accursius and the Beginnings of the European Jurisprudence/ Jogtudomanyi közlöny 54 /1999/ 171–175. p.
Glossators' works at ParalipomenaIuris
{{DEFAULTSORT:Glossator Legal history Roman law Medieval law Canon law history