Page:The Mediaeval Mind Vol 2.djvu/264

252 those works of Italian origin the material for which was drawn directly or indirectly from the Codex or Novels of Justinian, for instance the Summa Perusina and the Lex Romano, canonice compta, both of which probably belong to the ninth century. Such compilations were put together for practical use, or perhaps as aids to teaching.

Thus, so far as inference may be drawn from the extant writings, the legal teaching in any school during this long period hardly rose above an uncritical and unenlightened explanation of Roman law somewhat mediaevalized and deflected from its classic form and substance. There was also practical instruction in current legal forms and customs. Interest in the law had not risen above practical needs, nor was capacity shown for anything above a mechanical handling of the matter. Legal study was on a level with the other intellectual phenomena of the period.

In an opusculum written shortly after the middle of the eleventh century, Peter Damiani bears unequivocal, if somewhat hostile, witness to the study of law at Ravenna; and it is clear that in his time legal studies were progressing in both France and Italy. It is unsafe to speak more definitely, because of the difficulty in fixing the time and place of certain rather famous pieces of legal literature, which show a marked advance upon the productions to be ascribed with certainty to an earlier time. The reference is to the Petri exceptiones and the Brachylogus. The critical questions relating to the former are too complex even to outline here. Both its time and place are in dispute. The ascribed dates range from the third quarter of the eleventh century to the first quarter of the twelfth, a matter of importance, since the opening of the twelfth century is marked by the rise of the Bologna school. As for the place, some scholars still adhere to the south of France, while others look to Pavia or Ravenna. On the whole, the weight of argument seems to favour Italy and a date not far from 1075.

The Petrus, as it is familiarly called, is drawn from