work was done: Codex, Novels, and above all the Pandects were rescued from oblivion, and fully expounded, so far as the matter in them was still of interest. When the labours of the school had been conveniently heaped together in one huge Glossa, there was no vital inducement to do this work again. The school of the glossators was functus officio. Naturally with the lessening of the call, productivity diminished. Little was left to do save to gloss the glosses, an epigonic labour which would not attract men of talent. Moreover, treating the older glosses, instead of the original text, as the matter to be interpreted was unfavourable to progress in the understanding of the latter.
Yet, for a little, the breath of life was still to stir in the school of the glossators. There was a man of fame, a humanist indeed, named Cino, whose beautiful tomb still draws the lover of things lovely to Pistoia. Cino was also a jurist, and it came to him to be the teacher of one whose name is second to none among the legists of the Middle Ages. This was Bartolus, born probably in the year 1314 at Sassoferrato in the duchy of Urbino. He was a scholar, learned in geometry and Hebrew, also a man of affairs. He taught the law at Pisa and Perugia, and in the last-named town he died in 1357, not yet forty-four years old. Bartolus wrote and compiled full commentaries on the entire Corpus juris civilis; and yet he produced no work differing in kind from works of his predecessors. Moreover, between him and the body of the law rose the great mass of gloss and comment already in existence, through which he did not always penetrate to the veritable Corpus. Yet his labours were inspired with the energy of a vigorous nature, and he put fresh thoughts into his commentaries.[1]
The school of glossators presented the full Roman law to Europe. The careful and critical interpretation of the text of Justinian's Codification, of the Digest above all, was their great service. In performing it, these jurists also had educated themselves and developed their own intelligence. They had also put together in Summae the results of their own education in the law. These works facilitated legal study and sharpened the faculties of students and professors.
- ↑ On Bartolus see Savigny, Ges. etc. vi. pp. 137-184.
