[Sidenote: Irnerius and the revival of Civil Law.] The early Middle Ages had an almost superstitious reverence for the written law of Rome. Its decisions were still looked upon as eternal and universally binding, even when practically it had been superseded by a mass of fluctuating feudal custom. In Italy the elementary texts of the Roman Law had always been studied, and its principles always upheld in the courts. The eleventh century battle of Papacy and Empire became before long a conflict of political principles and theories. Both sides sought weapons in the legal treasures of ancient Rome. Accordingly the eleventh century saw flourishing schools of law at Pavia, at Ravenna, and perhaps at Rome. Early in the twelfth century the fame of Irnerius led to the establishment of a still greater school of law at Bologna, already the seat of flourishing schools of dialectic and literature, and where the teaching of law had already been begun by Pepo. Irnerius was a jurist in the service of the Countess Matilda, who, at her request, lectured on the laws of Justinian, and particularly the Pandects, at Bologna. The fact that he was afterwards in the service of Henry V. shows that both the papal and imperial powers agreed in welcoming his work. But with the appearance of Irnerius upholding the election of a schismatic Pope in 1118, the new school of Civil Lawyers became frankly imperialist, looking upon the law as furnishing an armoury of texts, from which the divine rights and universal claims of the Roman Emperor could be deduced, though also treating it as an intellectual discipline, and almost as a literary exercise. Wealth, honour, and political importance were showered on men, who possessed at once the key to theoretical knowledge and to success in practical life. Even earlier than at Paris, the law schools of Bologna became organised and permanent. Before the end of the century, the crowds of mature foreign students who flocked to hear the famous successors of Irnerius had set up the student-university of Bologna, whose establishment is as much of an epoch in the history of European thought as that of the university of masters at Paris. [Sidenote: The ‘Decretum’ of Gratian, and the growth of Canon Law.]