By the way, as illuminated law books, civil and canonical, form so large a section of Italian MSS., it may be well in this place to warn the reader against random explanations sometimes offered in sale catalogues concerning these books, their authors and commentators. For instance, this commentator Joannes Andreas was not, as we have seen it confidently stated (as if it were part of the actual contemporary title of the MS.), Bishop of Aleria (Episcopus Aleriersis), but a jurist of Bologna. The bishop lived a century or so after the jurist, who had completed his long career as professor of law at Bologna extending over forty-five years before the bishop was born. His chief works are Commentaries on the Clementines (printed in folio at Mayence 1471, and again at Dijon in 1575), and Commentaries on Five Books of the Decretals (printed in folio at Mayence in 1455, and at Venice in 1581). While on this topic of Italian law MSS., it may be useful to state clearly what they are. By way of contrast to the _Corpus Juris Canonici_, or Body of Canon Law, the subject of books dealing with the so-called Decretals, the other branch, including the Institutes Digest and Novellæ of Justinian, was entitled _Corpus Juris Civilis_. The Decretals, then, which we so often meet with in public libraries under various names, are the canons which mainly constitute the Canon Law. Strictly speaking they are the papal epistolary decrees (decreta), said to have existed from very early times. In the ninth century a collection of them was formed, or manufactured, in the name of the celebrated Isidore of Seville. But with the donation of Constantine to Pope Sylvester and many others in the later compilation of Gratian, these are usually looked upon as spurious and false. The great and authorised collection was completed by a simple Benedictine monk of St. Felix, in Bologna, a native of Chiusi, the ancient Clusium, in Tuscany, a man so learned in the law as to have earned the title of "Magister." This is the work often richly illuminated which goes by the name of the "Decretum Gratiani."[43] When glancing over the lovely initials and beautiful foliages or resplendent ornaments, we are apt to overlook the work itself which is truly monumental; being a summary of the papal epistolary decrees, the synodal canons of 150 councils, selections from various regal codes, extracts from the Fathers, and comments of Schoolmen; all methodically arranged and digested so as to facilitate its use as a manual for the schools. It is said to have occupied the compiler incessantly for twenty-five years. Immediately on its completion in 1151 it was at once authorised by the Pope Eugenius III. as the only text-book to be used in the public schools, and to govern the decrees of the Ecclesiastical Courts. Hence its celebrity. Its transcripts are very numerous, and it has been often printed. As to the Sext and Clementines they are merely additional commentaries on