later time. Azo's name appears in public documents from the year 1190 to 1220—and he may have survived the latter date by some years. His works were of such compass and excellence as to supersede those of his predecessors. His glosses still survive, and his Lectura on the Codex, his Summae of the Codex and the Institutes, and his Quaestiones, and Brocarda, the last a sort of work stating general legal propositions and those contradicting them. Azo's glosses were so complete as to constitute a continuous exposition of the entire legislation of Justinian. His Summae of the Codex and Institutes drove those of Placentinus out of use, which we note with a smile.[1]
None of the glossators is better known than Accursius. He comes before us as a Florentine, and apparently a peasant's son. He died an old man rich and famous, about the year 1260. Azo was his teacher. In 1252 he was Podesta of Bologna, which indicates the respect in which men held him. Villani, the Florentine historian, describes him as of martial form, grave, thoughtful, even melancholy in aspect, as if always meditating; a man of brilliant talents and extraordinary memory, sober and chaste in life, but delighting in noble vesture. His hearers drank in the laws of living from his mien and manners no less than from the dissertations of his mouth.[2] Late in life he retired to his villa, and there in quiet worked on his great Glossa till he died.
This famous, perhaps all too famous, Glossa ordinaria was a digest and, as it proved, a final one, of the glosses of his predecessors and contemporaries. He drew not only from their glosses, but also on their Summae and other writings. He added a good deal of his own. Great as was the feat, the somewhat deadened talent of a compiler shows in the result, which flattened out the individual labours of so many jurists. It came at once into general use in the courts and outside of them; for it was a complete commentary on the Justinianean law, so compendious and convenient that there was no further need of the glosses of earlier men. This book marked the turning-point of the Bologna school, after which its productivity lessened. Its
