Life and treatise

Abstract

Piero de' Crescenzi, who adopted the Latinate version of his name, Petrus de Crescentiis, for his scholarly pursuits, was born in Bologna c. 1235 into a land-owning patrician family7 The basic facts of his life are fairly easy to reconstruct from archival evidence, the prologue to his treatise, and his last will and testament. Crescenzi attended the University of Bologna, where he studied Logic, Medicine, the Natural Sciences and, finally, Law, which he had begun to practice as early as 1268.8 His education at the university was closely connected to his relationship with members of the Dominican Order in Bologna, to whom Crescenzi bequeathed his library9 The most important Dominican father in Crescenzi's education and intellectual development was Amerigo da Piacenza, a Professor of Philosophy and Theology at the University of Bologna,10 one of the figures to whom Crescenzi dedicated his work.