As glossators in a specific sense are identified the scholars of the 11th and 12th century legal schools in Italy, France and Germany. They studied Roman Law based on the Digestae, the Codex of Justinian, his Novellae and his law manual, the Institutiones Iustiniani, compiled together in the Corpus Juris Civilis. This title is in itself only a sixteenth century printers' invention. Roman Law is the legal system of ancient Rome. ... Justinian I depicted on a Byzantine mosaic Flavius Petrus Sabbatius Iustinianus or Justinian I (May 11, 483–November 13/14, 565), was Eastern Roman Emperor from AD August 1, 527 until his death. ... Justinian I depicted on a mosaic in the church of San Vitale, Ravenna, Italy The Corpus Juris Civilis (Body of Civil Law) is a fundamental work in jurisprudence, issued from 529 to 534 by order of Justinian I, Byzantine Emperor. ...

The glossators conducted detailed text studies that resulted in collections of explanations. For their work they used a method of study unknown to the Romans themselves, insisting that contradictions in the legal material were only apparent. They tried to harmonize the sources in the conviction that for every legal question only one binding rule exists. Thus they approached these legal sources in a dialectical way which is a characteristic of medieval scholasticism. In other medieval disciplines, for example theology and philosophy, too, glosses were made on the main authorative texts. Broadly speaking, Dialectic (Greek: διαλεκτική) is an exchange of propositions (theses) and counter-propositions (antitheses) resulting in a synthesis of the opposing assertions, or at least a qualitative transformation in the direction of the dialogue. ... Scholasticism comes from the Latin word scholasticus which means that [which] belongs to the school, and is the school of philosophy taught by the academics (or schoolmen) of medieval universities circa 1100 - 1500. ... Theology is reasoned discourse concerning God (Greek θεος, theos, God, + λογος, logos, word or reason). It also refers to the study of other religious topics. ... Philosophy is a discipline or field of study involving the investigation, analysis, and development of ideas at a general, abstract, or fundamental level. ...

In Greek "glossa" means "word". The glossators used to write in the indent of the old texts or between the lines (interlinear glosses). Later these were gathered into large collections, first copied as separate books, but also quickly written in the margins of the legal texts. The medieval copyists at Bologna developed a typical script to enhance the legibility of both the main text and the glosses. Reading early glossed manuscripts demands a great proficiency in palaeography, because these glosses are often written in a small or untidy script verging on illegibility. Bologna (from Latin Bononia, Bulaggna in the local dialect) is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna in northern Italy, between the Po River and the Apennines. ... Palæography (British) or paleography (American) (from the Greek palaios, old and graphein, to write) is the study of ancient and medieval manuscripts, indpendent of the language (Koine Greek, Classical Latin, Medieval Latin, Old English, etc. ...

Accursius' Glossa ordinaria, the final standard redaction of these glosses, contains around 100,000 glosses. Accursius worked for decaded on this task. There exists no critical edition of his glosses.

The medieval lawyers also wrote glosses on the medieval texts of canon law such as the Decretum Gratiani (around 1140), the Liber Extra of Gregory IX (1234), the Liber Sextus of Boniface VIII (1298) and later smaller collections of papal decretals, verdicts in letter form sent to papal delegates. The decrets of the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, too, have received glosses. In Western culture, canon law is the law of the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches. ... The Decretum Gratiani is a collection of canon law written around 1140 by Gratian. ... Gregory IX, né Ugolino di Conti (Anagni, ca. ... Boniface VIII, né Benedetto Caetani (Anagni, ca. ... The Fourth Council of the Lateran was summoned by Pope Innocent III with his Bull of April 19, 1213. ...

In the older historiography of the medieval learned law the view developed that after the standard gloss had become fixed a generation of socalled commentators started to take over from the glossators. In fact, the early medieval legal scholars, too, wrote commentaries and lectures, but their main effort was indeed creating glosses.

Most of the older glosses are only accessible in medieval manuscripts: only of a few manuscripts modern editions exist. The main microfilm collections of glossed legal manuscripts are at the Max-Planck-Institute for European Legal History in Frankfurt am Main, at the universities of Munich, Würzburg, Milan, Leyden and Berkeley.

External links

• Max-Planck-Institut für europäische Rechtsgeschichte, Frankfurt am Main
• Stephan Kuttner Institute for Medieval Canon Law, Munich
• Robbins Collection, School of Law, Boalt Hall, University of California at Berkeley