allegory of a noble dame, hight Jurisprudentia, within the circle of whose sweet and honied utterances many eager youths were thronging. Placentinus drew near, and received from her the book which he now gives to others.[1] This little allegory savours of the De consolatione of Boëthius, or, if one will, of Capella's De nuptiis Philologiae.
The most admirable surviving work of Placentinus is his Summa of the Codex of Justinian. His autobiographical proemium shows him not lacking in self-esteem, and tells why he undertook the work. He had thought at first to complete the Summa of Rogerius, an older glossator, but then decided to put that book to sleep, and compose a full Summa of the Codex himself, from the beginning to the end. This by the favour of God he has done; it is the work of his own hands, from head to heel, and all the matter is his own—not borrowed. Next he wrote for beginners a Summa of the Institutes. After which he returned to his own town, and shortly proceeded thence to Bologna, whither he had been called. "There in the citadel (in castello) for two years I expounded the laws to students; I brought the other teachers to the threshold of envy; I emptied their benches of students. The hidden places of the law I laid open, I reconciled the conflicts of enactments, I unlocked the secrets most potently." His success was great, and he was besought to continue his course of lectures. He complied, and remained two years more, and then returned to Montpellier, in order to compose a Summa of the Digest.[2] If indeed Placentinus speaks bombastically of his work, its excellence excuses him. His well-earned reputation as a jurist and scholar long endured.
Quaestiones, Distinctions, Libri disputationum, Summae of the Codex or the Institutions, and other legal writings, are extant in goodly bulk and number from the Bologna school. The names of the men are almost legion, and many were of great repute in their day both as jurists and as men of affairs. We may mention Azo and Accursius, of a little
