There were, of course, epitomes and epitomes. Such a work as the _Epitome
Juliani_, in which a good Byzantine lawyer of Justinian’s time presented
the substance of the _Novellae_, was an excellent compendium, and deserved
the fame it won. Of a lower order were the later manipulations of
Justinian’s _Codex_, by which apparently the _Codex_ was superseded in
Italy. One of these was the _Summa Perusina_ of the ninth or tenth
century, a wretched work, and one of the blindest.[372]
Justinian’s _Codex_ and Julian’s _Epitome_ were equipped with glosses,
some of which are as early as Justinian’s time; but the greater part are
later. The glosses to Justinian’s legislation resemble those of the
_Breviarium_ before referred to. That is to say, as the centuries pass
downward toward the tenth, the glosses answer to cruder needs: they become
largely translations of words, often taken from Isidore’s
_Etymologiae_.[373] Indeed many of them appear to have had merely a
grammatical interest, as if the text was used as an aid in the study of
the Latin language.
The last remark indicates a way in which a very superficial acquaintance
with the Roman law was kept up through the centuries prior to the twelfth:
it was commonly taught in the schools devoted to elementary instruction,
that is to say, to the Seven Liberal Arts. In many instances the
instructors had only such knowledge as they derived from Isidore, that
friend of every man. That is, they had no special knowledge of law, but
imparted various definitions to their pupils, just as they might teach
them the names of diseases and remedies, a list of which (and nothing
more) they would also find in Isidore. It was all just as one might have
expected. Elementary mediaeval education was encyclopaedic in its childish
way; and, in accordance with the methods and traditions of the transition
centuries, all branches of instruction were apt to be turned to grammar
and rhetoric, and made linguistic, so to speak--mere subjects for curious
definition. Thus it happened to law as well as medicine. Yet some of the
teachers may have had a practical acquaintance with legal matters, with an
understanding for legal documents and skill to draw them up.
The assertion also is warranted that at certain centres of learning
substantial legal instruction was given; one may even speak of schools of
law. Scattered information touching all the early mediaeval periods shows
that there was no time when instruction in Roman law could not be obtained
somewhere in western Europe. To refer to France, the Roman law was very
early taught at Narbonne; at Orleans it was taught from the time of Bishop
Theodulphus, Charlemagne’s contemporary, and probably the teaching of it
long continued. One may speak in the same way of Lyons; and in the
eleventh century Angers was famed for the study of law.
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