Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/44

 30 /. BEFORE THE NORMAN CONQUEST Then at Pavia, in the first half of the eleventli century, a law-school had arisen. In it men were endeavouring to sys- tematize by gloss and comment the ancient Lombard statutes of Rothari and his successors. The heads of the school were often employed as royal justices {indices palatini) ; their names and their opinions were treasured by admiring pupils. From out this school came Lanfranc. Thus a body of law, which though it had from the first been more neatly ex- pressed than, was in its substance strikingly like, our own old dooms, became the subject of continuous and professional study. The influence of reviving Roman law is not to be ignored. These Lombardists knew their Institutes, and, before the eleventh century was at an end, the doctrine that Roman law was a subsidiary common law for all mankind {lex omnium generalis) was gaining ground among them; but still the law upon which they worked was the old Ger- manic law of the Lombard race. Pavia handed the lamp to Bologna, Lombardy to the Romagna.^ As to the more or less that was known of the ancient Roman texts there has been learned and lively controversy in these last years.^ But, even if we grant to the cham- pions of continuity all that they ask, the sum will seem small until the eleventh century is reached. That large masses of men in Italy and southern France had Roman law for their personal law is beyond doubt. Also it is certain that Justinian's Institutes and Code and Julian's Epitome of the Novels were beginning to spread outside Italy. There are questions still to be solved about the date and domicile of various small collections of Roman rules which some regard G.; Brunner, op. cit. i. 387 flF.; Ficlter, Forschungen zur Reichs- u. Rechtsgeschichte Italiens, iii. 44 ff., 139 flF.; Conrat, op. cit. i. 393 flF. of Europe, i. 89 ff. The chief advocate of a maximum of knowledge has been Dr. Hermann Fitting in Juristische Schriften des friiheren Mittelalters, 1876, Die Anfange der Rechtsschule zu Bologna, 1888, and elsewhere. He has recently edited a Summa Codicis (1894) and some Quaestiones de iuris subtilitatibus, both of which he ascribes to Irnerius. See also Pescatore, Die Glossen des Irnerius, 1888; Mommsen, Preface to two-volume edition of the Digest; Flach, Etudes critiques sur I'his- taire du droit romain, 1890; Besta, L'Opera d'Irnerio, 1896; Ficker, op. cit. vol. iii, and Conrat, op. cit. passim.
 * Boretius, Preface to edition of Liber legis Langobardorum, in M.
 * It is well summed up for English readers by Rashdall, Universities