Bartolus de Saxoferrato (Italian: Bartolo da Sassoferrato; 1313 – 13 July 1357) was an Italian law professor and one of the most prominent continental jurists of
Medieval Roman Law. He belonged to the school known as the commentators or
postglossators. The admiration of later generations of civil lawyers is shown by the adage nemo bonus íurista nisi bartolista — no one is a good jurist unless he is a Bartolist (i.e. a follower of Bartolus).
Life and works
Bartolus was born in the village of Venatura, near
Sassoferrato, in the Italian region of
Marche. His father was Franciscus Severi, and his mother was of the Alfani family. He read civil law at the
University of Perugia under
Cinus, and in the
University of Bologna under
Oldradus and
Belviso, and graduated to doctor of law in 1334. In 1339 he started teaching first in
Pisa, then in
Perugia. He raised the character of Perugia's law school to a level with that of
Bologna, and this city made him an honorary citizen in 1348. In 1355, Emperor
Charles IV appointed him as his consiliarius. In Perugia
Baldus de Ubaldis and his brothers Angelus and Petrus became pupils of Bartolus. Bartolus died in Perugia at the age of 43, and was interred in the church of San Francisco with a monument inscribed with "Ossa Bartoli".[1]
Despite his short life, Bartolus left an extraordinary number of works. He wrote commentaries on all parts of the
Corpus Juris Civilis. He is also the author of a large number of treatises on specific subjects. Among these treatises is his famous book on the law relating to rivers (De fluminibus seu Tyberiadis). There are also almost 400 legal opinions (consilia) written at the request of judges or private parties seeking legal advice.
Bartolus developed many novel legal concepts, which became part of the civil law tradition. Among his most important contributions were those to the area of conflict of laws – a field of great importance in 14th century Italy, where every
city-state had its own statutes and customs. Bartolus also dealt with a variety of
constitutional law issues. In his treatise De insigniis et armis he discussed not only the
law of Arms but also some problems of
trademark law.
Bartolus also wrote on political issues, including the legitimacy of
city governments, partisan divisions and the regimes of Italy's petty tyrants. His political thought balanced respect for the
Empire with defense of the legitimacy of local Italian governments.
Bartolus is believed to be the first theorist of
international law.[2] He and his disciple
Baldus of Ubaldis defined a set of norms which enforced the reciprocal
independency and
autonomy of the city-states of northern Italy, but into the cornerstone of a common discipline established by the Empire.[2] While the city-states were internally self-governing, their mutual relationships were governed by the
Holy Roman Emperor.
Legacy
Already famous in his lifetime, Bartolus was later regarded as the greatest jurist after the renaissance of
Roman law.
This is evident not only from the above-quoted saying, but also from the fact that statutes in
Spain 1427/1433 and
Portugal 1446 provided that his opinions should be followed where the Roman source texts and the
Accursian gloss were silent.
Lorenzo Valla was driven out of the
University of Pavia in 1431 for his critique of Bartolus' Latin style.
Even in England, where the
civil law he had worked on was not applicable, Bartolus was held in high esteem.
He influenced civilian writers such as
Alberico Gentili and
Richard Zouch.
Bartolus de Saxoferrato at the left on the title page of Benvenutus Straccha (
Benvenuto Stracca) : De mercatura decisiones, 1671
Opera omnia, 1581 (Milano, Fondazione Mansutti)
Catalogs of manuscripts
Catalogs:
Casamassima, Emanuele, Codices operum Bartoli a Saxoferrato recensiti 1, Iter Germanicum (Firenze: Olschki, 1971).
Dolezalek, Gero, Verzeichnis der Handschriften zum römischen Recht bis 1600, 4 vols. (Frankfurt: Max-Planck-Institut für europäische Rechtsgeschichte, 1972).
García y García, Antonio, Codices operum Bartoli a Saxoferrato recensiti 2, Iter Hispanicum (Firenze: Olschki, 1973).
Izbicki, Thomas M., and Patrick Lally, "Texts Attributed to Bartolus de Saxoferrato in North American Manuscript Collections," Manuscripta 35 (1991): 146–155.
Izbicki, Thomas M., "Additional Texts Attributed to Bartolus de Saxoferrato in North American Manuscript Collections," Manuscripta 55 (2011): 146–155.
Izbicki, Thomas M., "Manuscript Works of Bartolus de Saxoferrato in the Vatican Library," Rivista Internazionale di Diritto Comune 23 (2012): 147-210.
Krafzik, Sebastian: Die Herrschereinsetzung aus der Sicht des Bartolus von Sassoferato In: Journal on European History of Law, London: STS Science Centre, Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 39–43, (ISSN 2042-6402).
Kuttner, Stephan, and Reinhard Elze, A Catalogue of Canon and Roman Law Manuscripts in the Vatican Library, 2 vols. (Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1986–1987). Volume 1: Codices Vaticani latini 541-2299; volume 2: Codices Vaticani latini 2300-2746.
Diego Quaglioni, Politica e diritto nel trecento italiano. Il "De tyranno" di Bartolo da Sassoferrato (1314–1357). Con l'edizione critica dei trattati "De Guelphis et Gebellinis", "De regimine civitatis", e "De tyranno", Olschki, Firenze, 1983.
Secondary sources
Maria Ada Benedetto (1958). Bartolo da Sassoferrato. In Novissimo Digesto Italiano. Vol 2.
ISBN88-02-01797-2. pp. 279–280.
Walter Ullmann (1962). Bartolus and English Jurisprudence. In Bartolo da Sassoferrato. Studi e Documenti per il VI centenario. Vol. 1. pp. 47–73.
Ephraim Emerton, Humanism and Tyranny (Gloucester, Mass., P. Smith, 1964 [c1925]). Includes translations of Bartolus, "De tyrannia" and "De
Guelphis et Gebellinis".
Osvaldo Cavallar et al., A grammar of signs: Bartolo da Sassoferrato's Tract on insignia and coats of arms (Berkeley, CA: Robbins Collection, University of California at Berkeley, 1994).
Osvaldo Cavallar,"River of Law," in A Renaissance of conflicts: visions and revisions of law and society in Italy and Spain, ed. John A Marino and Thomas Kuehn (Toronto, Ont.: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2004), pp. 31–129. (Includes editions of parts of the Tyberiadis and of a consilium.)
Anna T. Sheedy, Bartolus on Social Conditions in the Fourteenth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1942).
C. N. S. Woolf, Bartolus of Sassoferrato: His Position in the History of Medieval Political Thought (Cambridge, 1913).