Irnerius

Life and ideas

Irnerius taught in Bologna around 1100 and is traditionally named as the first of the Glossators. At that time the texts of Roman law, little studied in the West for centuries, were again being copied and read. Irnerius, who had first taught the liberal arts, began to teach the Digest and the Code of Justinian as living law, adding short explanatory notes, called glosses, between the lines and in the margins. He is also recorded as acting as a judge and as an adviser to Emperor Henry V. Pupils gathered around him, and the school that grew at Bologna over the next generations produced the standard Glossa Ordinaria of Accursius and became the model for the law faculties of European universities, so that the 'law of the doctors' shaped the legal thinking of the Continent for centuries.