offered for elementary education, and where the Roman law, with Justinian's Codification as a base, made in general the law of the land. There is no reason to suppose that it was not taught. Contemporary allusions bear witness to the existence of a school of law in Rome in the time of Cassiodorus and afterwards, which is confirmed by a statement of the jurist Odofredus in the thirteenth century. At Pavia there was a school of law in the time of Rothari, the legislating Lombard king; this reached the zenith of its repute in the eleventh century. Legal studies also flourished at Ravenna, and succumbed before the rising star of the Bologna school at the beginning of the twelfth century.[1] In these and doubtless many other cities[2] students were instructed in legal practices and formulae, and some substance of the Roman law was taught. Extant legal documents of various kinds afford, especially for Italy, ample evidence of the continuous application of the Roman law.[3]
As for the merits and deficiencies of legal instruction in Italy and in France, an idea may be gained from the various manuals that were prepared either for use in the schools of law or for the practitioner. Because of the uncertainty, however, of their age and provenance, it is difficult to connect them with a definite foyer of instruction.
Until the opening of the twelfth century, or at all events until the last quarter of the eleventh, the legal literature evinces scarcely any originality or critical capacity. There are glosses, epitomes, and collections of extracts, more or less condensed or confused from whatever text the compiler had before him. Little jurisprudential intelligence appears in any writings which are known to precede the close of the eleventh century; none, for instance, in the epitomes of the Breviarium and the glosses relating to that code; none in
- ↑ See Salvioli, Storia di diritto italiano, 3rd ed., 1899, pp. 84-90; ibid. L'Intruzione pubblica in Italia nei secoli VIII. IX. X.; Tardif, Hist, des sources du droit français, p. 281 sqq.; Savigny, Geschichte, etc., iv. pp. 1-9; Fitting, "Zur Geschichte der Rechtswissenschaft im Mittelalter," Zeitschrift für Rges. Sav. Stift., Roman. Abteil., Bd. vi., 1885, pp. 94-186; ibid. Juristische Schriften des früheren Mittelalters, 108 sqq. (Halle, 1876).
- ↑ A contemporary notice speaks of the enormous number of judges, lawyers, and notaries in Milan about the year 1000. Salvioli, L'Istruzione pubblica, etc., p. 78. It is hard to imagine that no legal instruction could be had there.
- ↑ The evidence is gathered in different parts of Savigny's Geschichte.
