The Poetical Sermon of a Mediæval Jurist: Placentinus and His 'Sermo de Legibus'

Abstract

Placentinus was one of the most influential and renowned jurists of the I2th century; and his fame, unlike the reputation of most of the other glossators, has continuously grown since. It was kept alive during the Middle Ages by the extensive use made of his Glosses and other works in the most important books of mediaeval legal science, the Summa Codicis of Azo and the Glossa ordinaria of Accursius; both quote him constantly under P., the siglum of his glosses. In the I6th century his three chief works, the Libellus de actionum varietatibus, the Summa Institutionum, and the Summa Codicis, were printed at Mainz by a certain Nicolaus Rhodius; his Summa Trium Librorum had already been printed repeatedly with the Summa Azonis. In the last hundred years several of his Glosses and many other minor writings have by the industry of German, French and Italian scholars been edited for the first time. His fame would have been still greater had it been recognized that the Quaestiones de iuris subtilitatibus, edited as a work of Irnerius, are in all probability by Placentinus, who was a pupil of one of Irnerius' pupils. One writing, on which he seems to have prided himself particularly, has hitherto remained undiscovered : his Sermo de legibus. I propose to demonstrate in the following pages that it is identical with the writing here published (p. 36.) His four biographers believed it to be lost.' As for the anonymous Sermo contra Pseudolegistas 'Interroga iumenta', the editor says that the authorship of Placentinus and the identity with the Sermo de legibus are neither provable nor probable, though possible.2 Even this mere possibility must be denied : the editor himself, a most competent critic, calls the sermon a legal tract of the less ingenious kind and written in a jejune style. But there is general agreement among the few experts that Placentinus was, though not the soundest, the most brilliant and independent of the glossators, that he was a classical scholar and poet as well as a jurist, that his style was of a rare vigour and elegance, and that his character,