The Role of Logic in The Legal Science of The Glossators and Commentators

Abstract

Between the end of the 11th and the beginning of the 12th century a school of law was created in Bologna dedicated to the study of Justinianian texts, that is to say to the examination of that assemblage of Roman law (collectively known in the Middle Ages as the Corpus iuris civilis) that had been compiled in Byzantium in the 6th century on the initiative of the Emperor Justinian. After a long and almost complete absence in the early Middle Ages, apart from some brief summaries, the texts reappeared in the course of the 11th century in northern Italy and from then on gradually began to be recognised and used not only by judges and notaries but also as subject matter in the preparation and training of jurists (Cortese 1993). Various aspects of the more distant past of the Bologna school are still unknown, but the determining impulse for the creation of a Studium (i.e., a school) aimed at the teaching of Roman law was probably due to the activity of a legal scholar by the name of Irnerius, who started lecturing on and explaining the Justinianian sources to his pupils in the early years of the 12th century.1 The teaching carried out in Bologna by Irnerius was undoubtedly innovative and original not only for its content (previously largely neglected), but also for the way chosen to present the teaching, in so far as the exclusive and specialised study of Roman law brought with it a substantial change in the traditional encyclopaedic approach that had been a typical element of scientific study in the past. Until the innovations introduced by Irnerius, the study of law had been seen as just one element in a much wider course of study that was centred on seven different disciplines— the liberal arts—that represented the totality of knowledge. Within this overall framework the teaching of law, deprived of scientific autonomy, was completely regarded as one of those concepts to be acquired through the study of rhetoric which, together with grammar and debate (artes sermocinales: i.e., the art of discourse), was one of the arts of the trivium.2