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Rh From the university of Bologna, which became the celebrated centre of the study of both laws, such eminent popes went out as Alexander III and Innocent  III, and the advice of its jurisconsults was sought on questions of first import, as by Frederick Barbarossa on the plain of Roncaglia, 1158.

In his Concordantia canonum discordantium, usually called Decretum Gratiani, Gratian attempted to bring into a harmonious code the statements of councils, popes, and eminent Fathers bearing on all manner of questions concerning the government of the church and its usages. This digest had even greater authority in its department than Peter the Lombard's Sentences in the department of systematic theology. In its sections are also contained the fictitious materials of the pseudo-Isidorian decretals, the most notorious portion of which is the donation of Constantine.

As time wore on, the need was felt of supplements to Gratian's work, which were furnished in the Decretals, so-called, collected by order of Gregory IX, 1234, the Liber Sextus or Sext, by Boniface VIII, 1298, the Liber Septimus or Clementine Constitutions, by Clement V, 1314, and the so-called Extravagantes, or fugitive decretals, twenty in number, issued by John XXII and incorporated into the code by John Chappuis in his edition of 1500. Chappuis also added seventy other decretals issued between the pontificates of Boniface VIII and Sixtus IV, 1294–1484. The completed digest, consisting of these parts, was authoritatively issued by Gregory XIII, 1582.

The Glosses and Little Glosses, which Huss frequently quotes—the Glossa ordinaria—are comments made upon the original texts by glossators, among whom Cardinal Zabarella,