to. That is to say, as the centuries pass downward toward the tenth, the glosses answer to cruder needs: they become largely translations of words, often taken from Isidore's Etymologiae.[1] Indeed many of them appear to have had merely a grammatical interest, as if the text was used as an aid in the study of the Latin language.
The last remark indicates a way in which a very superficial acquaintance with the Roman law was kept up through the centuries prior to the twelfth: it was commonly taught in the schools devoted to elementary instruction, that is to say, to the Seven Liberal Arts. In many instances the instructors had only such knowledge as they derived from Isidore, that friend of every man. That is, they had no special knowledge of law, but imparted various definitions to their pupils, just as they might teach them the names of diseases and remedies, a list of which (and nothing more) they would also find in Isidore. It was all just as one might have expected. Elementary mediaeval education was encyclopaedic in its childish way; and, in accordance with the methods and traditions of the transition centuries, all branches of instruction were apt to be turned to grammar and rhetoric, and made linguistic, so to speak—mere subjects for curious definition. Thus it happened to law as well as medicine. Yet some of the teachers may have had a practical acquaintance with legal matters, with an understanding for legal documents and skill to draw them up.
The assertion also is warranted that at certain centres of learning substantial legal instruction was given; one may even speak of schools of law. Scattered information touching all the early mediaeval periods shows that there was no time when instruction in Roman law could not be obtained somewhere in western Europe. To refer to France, the Roman law was very early taught at Narbonne; at Orleans it was taught from the time of Bishop Theodulphus, Charlemagne's contemporary, and probably the teaching of it long continued. One may speak in the same way of Lyons; and in the eleventh century Angers was famed for the study of law.
Our information is less broken as to an Italy where through the early Middle Ages more general opportunities
- ↑ See Conrat, Ges. der Quellen, etc., pp. 162-166, 168-182, 192-202, 240-252.
