Joannes Bassianus was an Italian
jurist
A jurist is a person with expert knowledge of law; someone who analyzes and comments on law. This person is usually a specialist legal scholar, mostly (but not always) with a formal education in law (a law degree) and often a Lawyer, legal prac ...
of the 12th century.
Life
Little is known of his origin, but he is said by his jurist contemporary to have been a native of
Cremona
Cremona ( , , ; ; ) is a city and (municipality) in northern Italy, situated in Lombardy, on the left bank of the Po (river), Po river in the middle of the Po Valley. It is the capital of the province of Cremona and the seat of the local city a ...
. He was a professor in the law school of
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 ...
, the pupil of
Bulgarus, and the master of
Azo. The most important of his writings which have been preserved in his ''Summary on the Authentica'', which
Savigny regarded as one of the most precious works of the
glossators
The scholars of the 11th- and 12th-century legal schools in Italy, France and Germany are identified as glossators in a specific sense. They studied Roman law based on the ''Digest (Roman law), Digesta'', the ''Codex Justinianus, Codex'' of Justin ...
.
Joannes, as he is generally termed, was remarkable for his talent in inventing ingenious forms for explaining his ideas with greater precision, and perhaps his most celebrated work is his "Law-Tree," which he entitled ''Arbor Actionum'', and which has been the subject of numerous commentaries. The work presents a tree, upon the branches of which the various kinds of actions are arranged after the manner of fruit. The civil actions, or , being forty-eight in number, are arranged on one side, while the equitable or actions, in number one hundred and twenty-one, are arranged on the other side.
A further scientific division of actions was made by him under twelve heads, and by an ingenious system of notation the student was enabled to class at once each of the civil or
praetor
''Praetor'' ( , ), also ''pretor'', was the title granted by the government of ancient Rome to a man acting in one of two official capacities: (i) the commander of an army, and (ii) as an elected ''magistratus'' (magistrate), assigned to disch ...
ian actions, as the case might be, under its proper head in the scientific division. By the side of the tree a few glosses were added by Joannes to explain and justify his classification. His Lectures on the
Pandects
The ''Digest'' (), also known as the Pandects (; , , "All-Containing"), was a compendium or digest of juristic writings on Roman law compiled by order of the Byzantine emperor Justinian I in 530–533 AD. It is divided into 50 books.
The ''Dige ...
and the Code, which were collected by his pupil
Nicolaus Furiosus, have unfortunately perished.
File:Bassiano, Giovanni – Lectura Institutionum, 13th-century – BEIC 7566030.jpg, ''Lectura Institutionum'', 13th-century manuscript. London, British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. Based in London, it is one of the largest libraries in the world, with an estimated collection of between 170 and 200 million items from multiple countries. As a legal deposit li ...
, Royal MS, Royal 4.B.II.
File:Bassiano, Giovanni – Summa cum glossis Bassiani, 13th-century – BEIC 10527150.jpg, ''Summa cum glossis Bassiani'', 13th-century manuscript. Reims, Bibliothèque municipale, Fonds manuscrits, Ms. 684.
References
Attribution:
*
Further reading
* Francis Zulueta and Peter Stein, eds., "Introduction," ''The Teaching of Roman Law in England Around 1200'' The Selden Society, 1990
External links
Works of Joannes Bassianus at ParalipomenaIuris
{{Authority control
Bassianus
12th-century writers in Latin