1. Epistle to Guido Sette (Sen. X, 2): “Bononiam perreximus, qua nil puto iucundius nilque liberius toto esset orbe terrarum. Meministi plane qui studiosorum conventus, quis ordo, que vigiliantia, que maiestas preceptorum: iurisconsultos veteres redivivos crederes!” In Epistole di Francesco Petrarca, ed. Dotti, U. (Turin, 1978), 710Google Scholar.

2. Epistle to Marco da Genova (Fam. XX, 4, 24): “Quam venale mercimonium fecere! lingua illis, manus ingenium anima decus fama tempus fides amicitie, ad postremum omnia venalia, neque pluris precii quam par est.” In Petrarca, F., Opere, 2 vols. (Florence, 1975), 1:1060Google Scholar.

3. Epistle “To Posterity,” in Epistole, ed. Dotti, 878. The final phrase reads, in the original, “quia earum [the laws'] usus nequitia hominum depravatur.” I have somewhat rewritten the translation in Letters from Petrarch, trans. Bishop, M. (Bloomington, Ind., 1966), 8Google Scholar. For Petrach's legal studies, see, most recently, Dotti, U., Vita di Petrarca (Rome/Bari, 1987), 16–23Google Scholar.

4. Since 1947, when Roberto Weiss declared that the lawyers' “leading rôle” had not been “sufficiently stressed” [Weiss, , The Dawn of Humanism (London, 1947), 5Google Scholar], much work has appeared, particularly under the influence of Kristeller's work on the ars dictaminis. For the connection between ars dictaminis and law, see Patt, W. D., “The Early ‘Ars Dictaminis’ as Response to a Changing Society,” in Viator 9 (1978): 133–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For literature in this strain, see generally Witt, R., “Medieval ‘Ars Dictaminis’ and the Beginnings of Humanism: a New Construction of the Problem,” in Renaissance Quarterly 35 (1982): 1–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and e.g., Seigel, J., Rhetoric and Philosophy in Renaissance Humanism (Princeton, 1968), 205ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Wieruszowski, H., “Arezzo as a Center of Learning and Letters in the Thirteenth Century,” in Traditio 9 (1953): 321–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For other views of the early importance of the lawyers, see Ullman, W., Medieval Foundations of Renaissance Humanism (New York, 1977), 11–12Google Scholar; and esp. Kantorowicz, E. H., “The Sovereignty of the Artist: A Note on Legal Maxims and Renaissance Theories of Art,” in Selected Studies (Locust Valley, 1965), 352–65Google Scholar. See also Weiss, R., Il Primo Secolo dell'Umanesimo (Rome, 1949Google Scholar); Weiss, , “Lovato Lovati, 1241–1309,” Italian Studies 6 (1951): 3–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Weiss, , The Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity (New York, 1969Google Scholar). Nevertheless complaints can still be heard. Cf. Kelley, D., “Vera Philosophia: The Philosophical Significance of Renaissance Jurisprudence” in Journal of the History of Philosophy 14, 3 (1976): 270CrossRefGoogle Scholar: “In all of the recent discussions of ‘civic humanism,’ it seems curious that the contributions of jurists, especially contemporaries of Petrarch and Salutati like Bartolus and Baldus, who used to figure so prominently in discussions of the new civilità of the Renaissance, are almost universally neglected.” See also Kelley, D., “Jurisconsultus Perfectus: The Lawyer as Renaissance Man,” in Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 51 (1988): 89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5. Cf. Weiss, R., Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity, 3.Google Scholar For other recent examples, see Kessler, E., Petrarca und die Geschichte (Munich, 1978Google Scholar); Dotti, U., Petrarca e la Scoperta della Coscienza Moderna (Milan, 1978Google Scholar). Note Petrarch's placement at the opening of Fueter's, E. standard Geschichte der neueren Historiographie (Munich/Berlin, 1911), 2–5Google Scholar; and esp. the discussion in the wide-ranging recent study of Demandt, A., Der Fall Roms: Die Auflösung des römischen Reiches im Urteil der Nachwelt (Munich, 1984), 92Google Scholar.

6. Demandt's readings in medieval sources (which does not include legal writings), while they reveal a number of important passages showing consciousness of a “Bewusstsein vom Ende Roms” (Demandt, Der Fall Roms, 83 ff.), sees an overwhelmingly “festgefügte Gedankenwelt,… unbefragte Mächte wie Kaiser und Kirche, die sich in eine instituitionelle und ideelle Kontinuität mit dem römischen Imperium stellten.” Ibid., 90. Thus even Demandt does not see any measure of the systematic and developed pre-humanism whose existence I will discuss here. Kelley, D., in “Clio and the Lawyers: Forms of Historical Consciousness in Medieval Jurisprudence,” in Medievalia et Humanistica 5 (1974): 25–49Google Scholar, does, of course, consider legal writings, but, as I will discuss below, from a rather different point of view from my own.

7. Weiss, Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity, 3.

8. Mommsen, T. E., “Petrarch's Conception of the ‘Dark Ages,’“ in Medieval and Renaissance Studies, (Ithaca, 1959), 120–21Google Scholar (quoting Petrarch, Apologia contra cuiusdam anonymi Galli calumnias).

9. To be sure, I will rely on a large number of first-rate studies of the doctrinal development of Bolognese law, which are cited throughout. In particular, I wish to acknowledge a very learned article by Donald Kelley. Kelly, “Clio and the Lawyers.” Kelley, of course, does bring the larger concerns of history of humanism to his work. Nevertheless, even Kelley has focused his attention on the texts that medieval lawyers studied, showing how a philological sensus historicus came naturally to lawyers whose lives were spent working with texts that were obviously the products of long histories of accretion and alteration. (Along these lines, see also Maschi, C., “Accursio Precursore del Metodo Storico-Critico nello Studio del ‘Corpus Iuris Civilis,’ “ in Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi Accursiani, 3 vols. [Milan, 1968], 2:597–618Google Scholar.) I will, by contrast, attempt to widen our focus beyond texts to political and social context.

10. Whitman, J., The Legacy of Roman Law in the German Romantic Era (Princeton, 1990CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

11. For broadly similar views of the attitude of the early generations of Bolognese jurists, see Cortese, E., “Scienza di Giudici e Scienza di Professori tra XII e XIII Secolo,” in Legge, Giudici, Giuristi. Atti del Convegno Tenuto a Cagliari nei Giorni 18–21 Maggio 1981 (Milano, 1982), 93–148Google Scholar; and Cavanna, A., “Il ruolo del giurista nell'età del diritto comune,” in Studia et Documenta Historiae et Iuris 44 (1978): 95–138Google Scholar; and the literature cited below n. 62. That the jurists harbored such attitudes does not, of course, imply that they did not manage, in daily practice, to serve the needs of the powerful. See generally the discussion of Padoa-Schioppa, A., “Sul ruolo dei giuristi nell'età del diritto comune: un problema aperto,” in Il Diritto Comune e la Tradizione Giuridica Europea (Perugia, 1980), 155–66Google Scholar.

12. Hildebertus, , Carmina Minora, ed. Scott, A. B. (Leipzig, 1969), no. 36Google Scholar. Quoted and translated in Morris, C., The Discovery of the Individual, 1050–1200 (repr. Toronto, 1987), 51Google Scholar; on Hildebert's attitude, see most recently Demandt, Der Fall Roms, 87.

13. For this attitude as characteristically humanistic, and for the differences between this attitude and many others toward the fall of Rome, see Momigliano, A. D., “Christianity and the Decline of the Roman Empire,” in Momigliano, , ed., The Conflict between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century (Oxford, 1963), 3ffGoogle Scholar. That the Petrarchan attitude saw calamity, and not merely rupture, distinguishes it from the various medieval ideas of Rome as having given way to a new Christian, or new Germanic kingly, order, surveyed in Demandt, Der Fall Roms, 83ff.

14. See Momigliano, A. D., “Cassiodorus and the Italian Culture of his Time,” in Studies in Historiography (London, 1966), 181–210Google Scholar.

15. See generally Musset, L., The Germanic Invasions, trans. E., and James, C. (University Park, Pa., 1975), 85ffGoogle Scholar.

16. “Langobardi, gens etiam Germana feritate ferocior….” Velleius Paterculus, Hist. Rom. 2.106.2.

17. In the earlier stages after the Lombard conquest, Roman law presumably survived as “personal” law. For the difficulty of determining the exact state of legal affairs under the Lombards, however, see the discussion of Bognetti, G. P., “Longobardi e Romani,” in L'Età Longobarda, 4 vols. (Milan, 1966), 1: esp. 89ffGoogle Scholar. Later, personality of law survived through the use of the so-called “professio legis” (attested from 769) the formal declaration that one lived by the law of the Romans or the law of the Lombards. See Bognetti, “Longobardi e Romani,” 120; Musset, Germanic Invasions, 93, and generally the discussion of Stouff, L., “Étude sur le principe de la personnalité des lois,” in Revue bourguignonne de l'enseignement supérieur 4 (1894): 5Google Scholar, for late examples of the “professio legis” of various laws. In one form—as the source of the feudal law of the Libri Feudorum—Lombard retained its importance into the early modern period. Professor Kelley lays much weight on the presence of the Libri Feudorum among the texts of learned law as a spur to historical thinking among the learned lawyers. See “Clio and the Lawyers,” 31, 37. In this paper, I will leave discussion of feudal law aside in favor of a discussion of private law, and in particular, marital property law.

18. On the popularity of the History of the Lombards, see Goffart, W., The Narrators of Barbarian History (A.D. 550–800) (Princeton, 1988), 329Google Scholar.

19. On the recovery of the Digest and the Bolognese revival, see, e.g., Kuttner, S., “The Revival of Jurisprudence,” in Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, ed. Benson, R. and Constable, G. (Cambridge, Mass., 1982), 299–323Google Scholar.

20. For a vivid evocation of the high social station of the learned lawyers, see Bras, G. Le, “Velut Splendor Firmamenti: Le Docteur dans le Droit de l'Église Médiévale,” in Mélanges Offerts à Étienne Gilson (Toronto/Paris, 1959), 373–88Google Scholar.

21. See Boncompagno's, Liber de Obsidione Ancone, ed. Zimolo, G., Rerum Italicarum Scriptores T. VI, pars 3 (Bologna, n.d.)Google Scholar, and the discussion of that work in Sutter, C., Aus Leben und Schriften des Magisters Boncompagno (Freiburg, 1894), 4ffGoogle Scholar.

22. See esp. Tunberg, T., “What is Boncompagno's ‘Newest Rhetoric’?” in Traditio 42 (1986): 299–334CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and the literature cited there. Parts of the Rhetorica Novissima are reproduced in Thorndike, L., University Records and Life in the Middle Ages (New York, 1971), 41–46Google Scholar. On Boncompagno, see esp. Sutter, Boncompagno; Misch, G., Geschichte der Autobiographie (Frankfurt a.M., 1962), 3:2:2, 1099–1123Google Scholar.

23. Cf. the “De origine juris” of Pomponius, at D. 1.2.2.

24. Boncompagno da Signa, Rhetorica Novissima (ed. Gaudenzi) in Gaudenzi, A., ed., Scripta Anecdota Glossatorum (Bologna, 1892), 2:253Google Scholar: “Undecima fuit apud Gothos qui legem gothicam ediderunt, que hodie in quibusdam partibus observatur. Duodecima fuit tempore imperatoris Karoli et quorundam regum qui Longobardis legem diderunt, que vocatur hodie Longobarda. Sed non debet dici lex, immo potius fex; quoniam est fece turpium vulgarium sordidata. Posset etiam dici, si natura facultatis grammatice pateretur, lex siquata; quia fere lex quelibet inceptionem habet ad hac dictione Si quis. Tertiadecima fuit in legibus municipalibus; quas hodie Italia specialiter imitatur propter omnimodam libertatem. Sed iste leges municipales atque plebiscita sicut umbra lunatica evanescunt, quoniam ad similitudinem lune crescunt iugiter et decrescunt secundum arbitrium conditorum.” The fourteenth origin, to complete the roll of laws of the era of decline: “iniuriosi et dampnabilis iuris origo fuit tempore Machometti….” Boncompagno was not the last to note that laws in some legal systems tend to begin “si quis….” For an analysis of “whoever law” as characteristically primitive, see Daube, D., Forms of Roman Legislation (Oxford, 1956), 2–8Google Scholar.

25. According to Kuttner, the “rude pun” on lex/fex dates back as far as the Bolognese canonist Huguccio, working at the end of the twelfth century. See Kuttner, S., “The Revival of Jurisprudence” in Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, ed. Benson, R. L. and Constable, G. (Cambridge, Mass., 1982), 306Google Scholar, citing Huguccio, Summa 32.4.15. Professor Kelley elegantly translates this inelegant gag as “not writ but shit.” Kelley, “Clio and the Lawyers,” 37.

26. For the dating, see below, n. 84.

27. See, e.g., among many, Spagnesi, E., Wernerius Bononiensis Iudex. La Figura Storica d'Irnerio, Accademia Toscana di Scienze e Lettere “La Colombaria.” Studi XVI (Florence, 1970), 14Google Scholar.

28. Cf. Bruni, , “De bello Italico adversus Gothos gesto libri IV. Prooemium,” in Leonardo Bruni Aretino, Humanistisch-Philosphische Schriften, Quellen zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters und der Renaissance, vol. 1, Baron, H., ed. (Leipzig, 1928), 148Google Scholar: “Huius autem belli, quod nunc scripturi sumus, nulla apud Latinos notitia supererat, fama tantummodo quaedam et ea ipsa tenuis admodum et obscura.”

29. Odofredus on Infortiatum, L. 82 ad L. Falc., verb. Tres Partes: “Debetis scire, studium fuit primo Romae, postea propter bella quae fuerunt in Marchia destructum est studium, tunc in Italia secundum locum obtinebat Pentapolis quae dicta Ravenna postea, unde Karolus fixit pedes suos, et ibi est testamentum eius, unde ibi cepit esse studium, post mortem Karoli, civitas ilia collapsa est, postmodum fuit translatum studium ad civitatem istam.” Quoted in Tamassia, N., “Odofredo,” repr. in Tamassia, , Scritti di Storia Giuridica (Padua, 1967), 2:384Google Scholar n. 108. For the identification of the “bella quae fuerunt in Marchia” with the invasions of Theodoric, see Kantorowicz, Studies in the Glossators, 196. Scholars are, however, uncertain what “bella in Marchia” Odofredus may have meant. See Cencetti, G., “Studium fuit Bononie,” in Le Origini dell'Università, Arnaldi, G., ed., (Bologna, 1974), 102Google Scholar.

30. For Odofredus's approving citation of Boncompagno's polemic against the “fetidissimum ius,” see Tamassia, “Odofredo,” 422 n. 6, citing Odofredus's commentary on C. 4.46.5.P.76B.

31. Odofredus on C. 5.3.38 (Auth. dos data): “Sed, Signori, hoc erat secundum consuetudinem longobardorum, unde ut non habeat locum longobardorum ius, in civitate ista, facimus iurare ita potestatem servare leges et rationes. Et ita continetur in Statuto huius civitatis cum longobarda non est lex nec ratio, sed est quoddam ius, quod faciebant Reges per se, et vocantur longobardi, id est apuli, quia primo venerunt de Germania in Sardiniam et postea in Apuliam.” Quoted in Tamassia, “Odofredo,” 422 n. 7. Tamassia suggests that Odofredus's odd reference to Sardinia may reflect confusion over the tradition that the Lombards had come from, in the words of Paul the Deacon, “Scadinavia.” But was such confusion really possible? The text of Paul was widely known, and any number of accounts of Lombard history recorded the origin of the Lombards in “Scandza” or “Scatinavia” or “Scadinavia.” See generally the texts collected in Monumenta Germaniae Historica (Scriptores Rerum Langobardicarum et Italicarum Saec. VI–IX), ed. Waitz, G. et al. (Hannover, 1878Google Scholar). I cannot discover in any of those texts any likely source for Odofredus's statement. On this passage cf. also Engelmann, Wiedergeburt, 102.I am grateful to Professor Walter Goffart for his aid with this problem.

32. Odofredus, commentary on D. 1.3.1.P.10A: “Quando plebeii huius civitatis volunt facere sua statuta, non plus vocarent prudentes quan tot asinos, et ideo ideo ipsi faciunt talia statuta qui nec habent latinum nec sententiam.” Quoted in Tamassia, “Odofredo,” 341 n. 1.

33. For the general history in Italy, see Bellomo, M., Ricerche sui Rapporti Patrimoniali fra Coniugi, Ius Nostrum 7 (Milan, 1961Google Scholar). For older research, see Ercole, F., “Vicende Storiche della Dota Romana nella Pratica Medievale dell'Italia Superiore” in Archivio Giuridico 80 (1908): 393–490Google Scholar; ibid., 81 (1908): 34–148; Brandileone, F., Scritti di Storia del Diritto Italiano (Bologna, 1931Google Scholar). Cf. also Kantorowicz, Studies in the Glossators, 94ff. and esp. 100–2.

34. This was the so-called right of collatio dotis. For a discussion with further references, see Mayali, L., Droit savant et coutumes: L'exclusion des filles dotées, XIIème–XVème siècles, lus Commune Sonderheft 33 (Frankfurt a.M., 1987), 6ffGoogle Scholar.

35. For the terms “dowry” and “brideprice,” see Hughes, D. O., “From Brideprice to Dowry in Mediterranean Europe” in Journal of Family History 3 (1978): 262–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar. There is some dispute, however, about the use of these terms. See Goody, J., The Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe (Cambridge, 1983), 240–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36. For a survey of possible sources for donatio propter nuptias (earlier denominated donatio ante nuptias) especially among customs of the Eastern Empire, see Mitteis, L., Reichsrecht und Volksrecht in den östlichen Provinzen des römischen Kaiserreichs (Leipzig, 1891), 256–312Google Scholar.

37. Bellomo, Rapporti Patrimoniali, 226–27.

38. “De Nuptiis. Si pater filiam suam aut frater sororem legetimam alii ad maritum dederit, in hoc sibi sit contempta de patris vel matris substantia, quantum ei pater aut frater in diae traditionis nuptiarum dederit: et amplius non requirat.” Leges Langobardorum, ed. Blu(h)me, F., Monumenta Germaniae Historia (LL.) (Hannover, 1868), 4:42Google Scholar.

39. “Si quis Langobardus se vivente filias suas nupto tradiderit, et alias filias in capillo in casa reliquerit, tunc omnes aequaliter in eius substantia heredis succedant, tamquam filii masculini.” Leges Langobardorum, ed. Blu(h)me, 108.

40. Cf. Herlihy, D., Medieval Households (Cambridge, Mass., 1985), 50Google Scholar. Lombard marriage law also embodied an absolute subjection of wife to the power of husband through the mundio (which constituted literally a sale of the wife from her father to her new husband) which was, in theory, more rigorous in Lombard law than in any other of the medieval legal systems (Herlihy, Medieval Households, 48). Nevertheless, in practice, after the very early Middle Ages, mundio survived as a largely symbolic sale that left women considerable freedom (Hughes, “Brideprice to Dowry,” 268). Significantly, the faderfio, too, became a substantial gift by the time of the central Middle Ages, resembling in many ways a supplemental dowry.

41. Radding, C., The Origins of Medieval Jurisprudence (New Haven, 1988)Google Scholar, is unfortunately unreliable in detail. On Lombard legal scholarship, see still the standard histories of Italian law. See also Vaccari, P., Diritto Longobardo e Letteratura Longobardistica intorno al Diritto Romano, Ius Romanum Medii Aevi 1, 4 b ee (Milan, 1966Google Scholar); and the observations of Cortese, E., “Legisti, Canonisti e Feudisti: La Formazione di un Ceto Medievale,” in Università e Società nei Secoli XII–XVI (Pistoia, 1982), 230ffGoogle Scholar.; and Cortese, “Lex, Aequitas, Utrumque Ius nella Prima Civilistica,” in “‘Lex et Iustitia’ nell'Utrumque Ius: Radice Antiche e Prospettive Attuali,” Utrumque Ius 20 (1989): 101 n. 11Google Scholar.

42. See the discussion of Mayali, Droit savant et coutumes, 13.

43. See the famous “dictatus papae” of 1075: “Quod illi soli licet pro temporis necessitate novas leges condere….” In Jaffé, P., ed., Monumenta Gregoriana, Bibliotheca Rerum Germanicarum 2 (Berlin, 1865), 174Google Scholar.

44. For canonist attitudes, see Tierney, B., Religion, Law and the Growth of Constitutional Thought, 1150–1650 (Cambridge, 1982), 14, 37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45. For the dating of the rise of the communes, establishing themselves at about the same time as the Gregorian reforms, see Hyde, J. K., Society and Politics in Medieval Italy (London, 1973), 49–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46. See the discussion of Calasso, F., Lezioni di Storia del Diritto Italiano. Le Fonti del diritto (secoli V–XV) (Milano, 1946), 341Google Scholar. Section 10 of the Peace also spoke of the “leges” of the communes [in Monumenta Germania Historica (Const. et Acta Publ.) 1:413], but the exact import of this term is not clear. See the discussion of Gualazzini, U., Considerazioni in Tema di Legislazione Statutaria Medievale, 2d ed. (Milano, 1958), 89 n. 18Google Scholar.

47. For the suggestion that the Liber Augustalis served as an inspiration in the Northern communes, see Wolf, A., “Die Gesetzgebung der entstehenden Territorialstaaten,” in Handbuch der Quellen und Literatur der neueren Europäischen Privatrechtsgeschichte, ed. Coing, H. (Munich, 1973—), 1:573Google Scholar.

48. Teramo: “omnia veterascunt et nichil est sub sole stabile.” Forlì: “cum humana natura adeo novas satagat assidue addere formas, cum plura sint negotia quam vocabularia que sub iuris scripti regulis non clauduntur et quae municipali iure decet ac expedit cohortari.” Gaeta: “ut secundum temporum diversitatem, idem ius eademque iustitia varie disponat.” All quoted in Calasso, Lezioni, 335; see also Sbriccoli, M., L'Interpretazione dello Statuto: Contributo allo Studio della Funzione dei Giuristi nell'Età Comunale (Milano, 1969), 24–25Google Scholar. Professor Mayali has pointed out, in a personal communication, the similar example of the statutes of St. Gilles (1215), cap. xxviii, De jure fisci: “Mundi status, semper variabilis et incertus, nunquamque stabilis, scilicet inter propera et adversa fluctuans, etiam jura regnorum mutat.”

49. The odium quartae can be dated to the year 1090 in Milan. See Bellomo, Rapporti Patrimoniali, 6.

50. For the dating of the statutes, see Ercole, “Vicende Storiche,” part 2, 102–40. See also Mayali, Droit savant et coutumes, 56. For the general tendency of the statutes of the new communes to endorse Lombard practices, see the examples in Schupfer, F., Manuale di Storia del Diritto Italiano (Città di Castello; Rome/Turin/Florence, 1908), 445Google Scholar.

51. See generally the discussion of the literature in Hughes, “Dowry to Brideprice,” 287–91. See also (from a rather different point of view) the careful assessment of parallel developments in southern France in Mayali, Droit savant et coutumes, 71ff.; and the discussion of the imperative of “la conservation de la famille agnatique” in Mayali, , “La notion de ‘statutum odiosum” dans la doctrine romaniste au Moyen Age,” in Ius Commune 12 (1984), 68Google Scholar.

52. See the examples in Herlihy, Medieval Households, 99.

53. Ercole, “Vicende Storiche,” part 2, 138–40

54. See the survey in Tabacco, G., The Struggle for Power in Medieval Italy: Structures of Political Rule, trans. Jensen, R. Brown (Cambridge, 1989), 224ffGoogle Scholar., and the literature cited there.

55. Hessel, A., Geschichte der Stadt Bologna von 1116 bis 1280, Historische Studien, Heft 76 (Berlin, 1910), 334Google Scholar.

56. Ibid., 332.

57. See the editor's introduction to Gaudenzi, A., ed., Statuti delle Società del Popolo di Bologna, 2 vols., Fonti per la Storia d'Italia 3 & 4 (Rome 1889–1896), 1Google Scholar: Società delle Armi, VII–VIII.

58. Frati, L., ed., Statuti di Bologna dall'Anno 1245 all'Anno 1267, 3 vols. (Bologna, 1869), 1:414–15Google Scholar (L.4, Rub. 41): “Statuimus quod si quis moriretur intestatus relictis vel filiabus feminis, si filia nupta fuerit sit illa contenta de dote que fuit data quod ea in bonis paternis amplius non petat…. et hoc statutum dicimus habere locum voluntate conscilii ab anno domini M.CC.XXXIII indictione XI.” There may have been earlier versions of this statute. Nevertheless, the aggressively innovatory dating of the statute supports the argument offered in the text.

59. For a later version of this provision of Bolognese law as a model for the new agnatic pattern, see Herlihy, Medieval Households, 200 n. 13.

60. In particular, the tradition represented by Martinus of Gosia and his followers. See Gualazzini, Considerazioni, 89ff. See also, most recently Mayali, Droit savant et coutumes, 41. For adept and subtle wrestling of the Bolognese lawyers over this question, see esp. Mayali, “La notion de ‘statutum odiosum’”; and Sbriccoli, L'Interpretazione dello Statuto.

61. See esp. the excellent discussions of Calasso, Lezioni, 333ff.; and Gualazzini, Considerazioni, 94ff.

62. Cf. Gouron, A., “Coutume contre loi chez les premiers glossateurs,” in Gouron, A. and Rigaudière, A., eds., Renaissance du Pouvoir Legislatif et Genèse de l'État (Montpellier, 1988), 117Google Scholar: “Les romanistes se virentcontraints d'opposer à un système juridique par essence universel, toutes les sources de droit laïque qui ne derivaient pas de l'imperium romanum….”; Bellomo, M., “I Giuristi, la Giustizia e il Sistema del Diritto Comune,” in Legge, Giudici, Giuristi. Atti del Convegno Tenuto a Cagliari nei Giorni 18–21 Maggio 1981 (Milano, 1982), 158–59Google Scholar: “[I]l giurista è e si sente l'interprete terreno di una dimensione strutturata in modo eterno…. Siamo qui sul versante opposto a quello tenuto dai signori cittadini, dalle tante signorie erette a tirannide, ch'è bene rappresentato da chi teorizza l'arbitrium voluntatis della signoria come base e sostegno di ogni norma giuridica locale…. [L]a guistizia serve per discriminare le norme del ius commune, più guiste, da quelle del ius proprium, inguiste e tirraniche….” For the peculiar aloofness of the Bolognese doctors from the world of practice, which set them apart from jurists in other communes, see Cortese, “Scienza di Giudici e Scienza di Professori.” Generally on this topic, see R. Benson, “Political Renovatio: Two Models from Roman Antiquity,” in Benson and Constable, eds., Renaissance and Renewal, 339–86.

63. [Falsely attributed to Irnerius], Zanetti, G., ed., Questiones de Iuris Subtilitatibus (Florence, 1958), 16Google Scholar: “aut unum esse ius, cum unum sit imperium, aut si multa diversaque iura sunt, multa superesse regna.” Discussed in Gualazzini, Considerazioni, 19.

64. See the discussion of Cortese, “Lex, Aequitas, Utrumque Ius.”

65. See the discussions in Gualazzini, Considerazioni, 28–29; and Cortese, “Legisti, Canonisti e Feudisti,” 248, and generally 246ff.

66. So argued in J. Whitman, “A Note on the Medieval Division of the Digest,” forthcoming in Tijdschrift voor Rechtsgeschiedenis.

67. With, in particular, the exceptions noted above, n. 60.

68. See Kantorowicz, Studies, 94ff. and esp. 99–100; see also ibid., 220ff.

69. See generally Bellomo, Rapporti Patrimoniali. Twelfth-century lawyers worked, for example, to construct Roman law devices that would somehow preserve some effective property rights for the spouses of Lombards. Cf. Vaccari, Diritto Longobardo e Letteratura Longobardistica, 12. See ibid., passim, for numerous examples of Roman/Lombard marriage law conflicts. Vaccari presents these examples without attempting any explanation of the comparative predominance of marriage-law cases.

70. On the famous debate between Bulgarus and Martinus on marital property law, see Kantorowicz, Studies, 94.

71. Bulgarus on C. 1.14.3: “Quidam sunt, qui ex hac lege inferre volunt, legem Longobardam non esse legem, quoniam hac forma facta non est: quibus non consentio…” Published in “Anhang III” to Savigny, , Geschichte des Römischen Rechts im Mittelalter, 2d ed. (Heidelberg, 1850), 4:476Google Scholar. On this topos, see Cortese, “Legisti, Canonisti e Feudisti,” 215.

72. Zanetti, ed., Questiones de Iuris Subtilitatibus, 15: “Qui vero nostra loca invadunt, quamdiu possent ipsi iure gentium depelli, tam diu statuta eorum velud hostium non discutimus. Set si regno eorum, qualecumque fuerit, extincto ipsi nobiscum ducendo invicem seu nubendo coalescunt, quotiens sue gentis vel nomen vel statuta predicant, non videntur aliud facere nisi vulnus antiqui doloris refricare. Statutorum enim vis si qua fuit, una cum suis auctoribus iam tunc expiravit. Recolunt tamen adhuc quidam huiusmodi suas, ut ipsi dicunt, ‘leges.’” For a discussion of the dating of this work, see the editor's introduction to ibid., VIIIff. For an expression of similar hostility, see the “Exceptiones Petri,” ed. Mor, C. G., in Scritti Giuridici Preirneriani, 2 vols. in 1 (Torino, 1980), 2:178Google Scholar (Title, “De iusticia et consuetudine).” For the Bolognese mix of suspicion and indifference toward Lombard law, see also Cortese, “Scienza di Giudici e Scienza di Professori,” 119–20; and Cortese, “Legisti, Canonisti e Feudisti,” 214ff. Disdain for the “fex rusticorum” of Lombard law may have been so powerful that learned lawyers preferred to remain anonymous when they commented on Lombard law. See Cortese, E. and D'Amelio, G., “Prime Testimonianze Manoscritte dell'Opera Longobardistica di Carlo di Tocco,” in I Glossatori (Pavia, 1974), 96Google Scholar.

73. At least among the canonists. See Kuttner, “Revival of Jurisprudence,” 306, citing Huguccio, Summa 32.4.15. Unfortunately I have not been able to see this passage. On Huguccio's attitude, see also Gouron, “Coutume contre loi,” 117.

74. Boncompagno, “Cedrus,” III: “statutum est arbitraria mundi norma que a uulgari hominum consuetudine procedit,” and “quelibet civitas in finibus Ytalie sua facit statuta.” In Rockinger, L., Briefsteller und Formelbücher des eilften bis vierzenhten Jahrhunderts, 2 vols. (Munich, 1863–1864), 1:122Google Scholar.

75. Ibid.: “non obstante aliqua lege que contra statutum dicere videatur.” See the discussion in Gualazzini, Considemzioni, 109.

76. Rhetorica Novissima, 253. Quoted above n. 24.

77. Rhetorica Novissima, 289: “ius civile non debet plurimum commendari, quoniam peripsum vel cum ipso non regitur centesima pars orbis ten-arum et, quod est vituperabile, per statuta rusticorum iugiter evanescit et plebiscita popularia sibi auctoritatem subripiunt et favorem: quia non sine pudore tacere cogitur ubi plebiscitum loquitur vel statutum.” The word “vituperabile” is an emendation of Solmi, accepted by Gualazzini, Considerazioni, 102 n. 4.

78. C. 5.3.20: “Dos data donationem propter nuptias meretur.”

79. See F. Brandileone, “Rapporti Patrimoniali fra Coniugi in Italia” in Brandileone, , Scritti di Storia del Diritto Privato Italiano, 1:318–19Google Scholar; Haenel, G., ed., Dissensiones Dominorum (Leipzig, 1834), sees. 263, 433Google Scholar.

80. Odofredus on C. 5.3.20. p. 264B: “Iste donationes propter nuptias variis modis nuncupantur, secundum longobardum vocatur murgitatio (i.e., morganatio) sed secundum vulgare nostrum vocatur murganale, unde olim, et adhuc non sunt XXV anni, quicunque contrahebat sponsalia, dicebantur talia verba per iurisperitum: ‘Vos, domina, habetis in pacto donare tantum in dotem?’ “Vos, domine vir, promittis ei facere secundum ius?’ In aliis locis vocatur antifactum, sed in partibus ultramontanis vocatur dotalium eius….” Quoted in Tamassia, “Odofredo,” 423 n. 10.

81. Quoted in full, above n. 31. Note that Odofredus, like the anonymous contemporaries of Bulgarus, denied that Lombard law had the form of lex.

82. Odofredus left a description of his own involvement in a typical marriage law case of the time. He represented a bride who had not demanded her morgincap at the time of her marriage and who attempted to claim it some twenty-five years later. Tamassia, “Odofredo,” 423nn.

83. Roman law as Odofredus understood did not, of course, exclude a greater “solicitude” for the feudal order than was shown by most of the Bolognese lawyers. On Odofredus's attitude, see Cortese, “Scienza di Giudici e Scienza di Professori,” 140–41.

84. Particularly in the 1250s. (Hessel, Geschichte der Stadt Bologna, 337–40). If 1233 is approximately the correct date for the abolition of morgengabe in Bologna, then Odofredus gave his commentary on the lex “dos data” “not twenty-five years later”—that is, sometime around the mid-1250s. This dating tallies nicely with internal evidence of the manuscripts of Odofredus's commentary that place his activity sometime between 1247 and 1263. Cf. Tamassia, “Odofredo,” 362.

85. Quoted above, n. 32.

86. Rhetorica Novissima, 292: “Non est hoc mirabilius mirabili, immo miserabilius miserabili, quod leges municipales, plebiscita, et statuta rusticorum tanta felicitate atque auctoritate refulgent, quod secumdum litteram intelliguntur sine glosis et solutionibus alienis….”

87. For a similar emphasis on the culturally disruptive, and accordingly culturally productive, effects of innovative statute making, see Kantorowicz, “Sovereignty of the Artist,” 361.

88. See the famous treatment in Panofsky, E., Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art (repr. New York, 1972), e.g., 155–56Google Scholar. For Bologna as a center for the beginnings of the International Gothic Style—notably in the person of the so-called “Illustrator,” who worked on legal texts—see Vegas, L. Castelfranchi, International Gothic Art in Italy (Dresden, 1966), 15ffGoogle Scholar.

89. For French influences on the art of fourteenth-century Bologna, see Castelfranchi Vegas, International Gothic Art in Italy, 15.

90. For the Orléans school of Roman law that influenced fourteenth-century Italian jurists, see, e.g., Cortese, “Legisti, Canonisti e Feudisti,” 263ff.

91. Kelley, “Jurisconsultus Perfectus,” 89. Kelley adds that the outlook of the commentators was “largely independent both of the political ‘crisis’ described by Baron and of the ‘Machiavellian moment’ defined by John Pocock.” Ibid. That may well be true. But I hope I have demonstrated that the Roman lawyers showed the marks of their own period of, so to speak, “Baronian” political crisis, dating to the thirteenth century.

92. On Cino as a lawyer, see esp. Astuti, G., “Cino da Pistoia e la Giurisprudenza del suo Tempo,” in Colloquio Cino da Pistoia, Atti dei Convegni Lincei 18 (Rome, 1976), 129–52Google Scholar; Monti, G. M., Cino da Pistoia Giurista (Città del Castello, 1924Google Scholar).

93. Mayali, Droit savant et coutumes, 61–62.

94. da Pistoia, Cino, Lectura super Codice cum Additionibus (Venice, Andreas de Thoresanis, 1493), 416Google Scholar, commentary on “Sancimus,” [C. 5.4.]: “…per totam quasi Italiam sunt consuetudines et statuta terrarum quibus dicatur quod sorores cum fratribus non succedunt ipsas tamen dotare patres vel fratres…. Advertatis sicut ego dixi predicta solu. pendet ex illo articulo utrum per statutum possit auferri legitima qui iam disputatus fuit bononie et solutus de equitate quod non possit.” For Cino's attitude as a late, but particularly powerful, statement of the atittude of the earlier Bolognese lawyers whom I have described above, see Bellomo, “I Giuristi, la Giustizia e il Sistema del Diritto Comune,” 158–59.

95. Lovato Lovati, the prominent late thirteenth-century Paduan jurist and poet praised at Petrarch, Rerum Memorandum Libri 2:61 and discussed by Weiss, “Lovato Lovati,” included the following lines in his verse epistle to Compagnino:

Theotonicus reboet boreali crudus ab arcto,

Transeat [h?]ac siciens apula regna furor,

Excipiat rabiem Karulus metuendus ab austro

Et videant Ligures prelia pulcra ducum,

Marchia Tarvisii nitidis horrescat in armis …

Reproduced in Foligno, C., “Epistole inedite di Lovato de' Lovati e d'altri a lui,” Studi Medievali 2 (1906–1907): 55Google Scholar. R. Sabbadini, in “Postille alle ‘Epistole inedite di Lovato,’” ibid., 260, identified the events described with the descent on Italy of Conradin the Swabian in 1267–68. Regardless of the contemporary events to which Lovato was referring, it is worth suggesting that his experience of those events was colored by the Bolognese traditions of historical description of invasions of Italy embodied in Odofredus's accounts of the Gothic[?] “bella in Marchia,” and the “Apulian”-Lombard invasions.

96. For the departure of Bartolus and Baldus from the historic hostility of the Roman lawyers for municipal statutes, see the subtle discussion of Bellomo, “I Giuristi, la Giustizia e il Sistema del Diritto Comune,” 159–60; also Canning, J., The Political Thought of Baldus de Ubaldis (Cambridge, 1987), 93–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar and the literature cited there. For Baldus's view on the specific question of statutes on exclusion of dowered daughters, see Mayali, “La notion de “statutum odiusum,’” 66ff. The full range of learned theory on statutes is explored, and placed intriguingly in social context in Sbriccoli, L'Interpretazione dello Statuto.

97. Quoted in Kelley, “Clio and the Lawyers,” 35. The statute-book of Forlì is quoted above in n. 48. Professor Kelley also cites a number of similar statements from pre-fourteenth-century lawyers involving the public law of the Empire. See ibid., esp. 34 (discussing Placentinus and Cino), 40–41 (discussing canonists). I do not know whether such sentiments were confined, among pre-Bartonist Roman lawyers, to discussions of public law, nor whether Placentinus in particular may have represented some dissenting tradition connected with Martinus of Gosia and the canon law tradition. At any rate, Baldus's embrace of this idea corresponded with Bartolist accommodationism toward municipal statute-making.

98. For Petrarch on the pigs of Padua, see Letter to Francesco da Carrara (Sen. XIV, 1) in Epistole, ed. Dotti, 790: “…dixisti statutum populi vetus esse ne id fieret penamque additam, ut porcos in publico repertos auferre volentibus liceret. Sed an nescis ut homines sic humana cuncta senscere? Senescunt iam pene romane leges, et nisi in scolis assidue legerentur, iam procul dubio senuissent: quid statutis municipalibus eventurum putas?” The suggestion that this passage reflects the thought of Cino on statutes is made by Chiapelli, L., Vita e Opere Guiridiche di Cino da Pistoia (Pistoia, 1881), 175Google Scholar. The passage is also discussed by Tamassia, N., “Francesco Petrarca e gli Statuti di Padova,” in Scritti di Storia Giuridica, 2:527–30Google Scholar; and in Sbriccoli, Interpretazione dello Statuto, 25. For the contrast in attitude to that prevalent among advocates of communal law-making, note the language of the statutes of Teramo, quoted in Calasso, Lezioni, 335, and discussed above, n. 48.

99. Epistle “To Posterity,” in Epistole, ed. Dotti, 878.