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254 successful contestants had won; but that the latter could by counter-actions compel them to pay their share of the necessary expenses of the prior contest. Sometimes the Petrus seems to draw a general rule of law from the apparent instances of its application in Justinian's Codification. Therein certain formalities were prescribed in making a testament, in adopting a son, or emancipating a slave. The Petrus draws from them the general principle that where the law prescribes formalities, the transaction is not valid if they are omitted. In fine, unsystematized as is the arrangement of topics, the work presents an advance in legal intelligence over mediaeval law-writings earlier than the middle of the eleventh century.

If the Petrus was adapted for use in practice, the Brachylogus, on the other hand, was plainly a book of elementary instruction, formed on the model of Justinian's Institutes. But it made use of his entire codification, the Novels, however, only as condensed in Julian's Epitome. The influence of the Breviarium is also noticeable; which might lead one to think that the treatise was written in Orleans or the neighbourhood, since the Breviarium was not in use in Italy, while the Codification of Justinian was known in France by the end of the eleventh century. The beginning of the twelfth is the date usually given to the Brachylogus. It does not belong to the Bologna school of glossators, but rather immediately precedes them, wherever it was composed.

The Brachylogus, as a book of Institutes, compares favourably with its model, from the language of which it departed at will. Both works are divided into four libri; but the libri of the Brachylogus correspond better to the logical divisions of the law. Again, frequently the author of the Brachylogus breaks up the chapters of Justinian's Institutes and gives the subject-matter under more pertinent headings. Sometimes the statements of the older work are improved by rearrangement. The definitions of the