customary law became a written law. Along with Roman law came the notary, who as a
paralegal agent had a recognized authority to create in writing juridically authentic
documents that were accepted in legal disputes as proof, whether they concerned loans,
business contracts, marriage agreements, wills, property matters, or a dozen other
subjects of legal conflict.
The earliest important center for the study of Roman law in France was Montpellier,
where legal scholars like the Italian jurist and glossator Placentinus were at work in the
1160s. In the early 13th century, the Bolognese jurist and professor Francis Accursius
produced a gloss on the body of Roman law, a commentary recognized as so complete
and superior to all others that the jurists who produced commentaries after Accursius
would be called “postglossators.” By 1260, Montpellier was the site of a university with a
law faculty and students, many of whom as graduates became judges and administrators
in southern France as it gradually came under control of the French crown in the 13th
century. In coming into the service of the French king, they brought a legal mentality
formed by the concepts of Roman law that would influence in many important ways the
further development of French law.
A second system of law arose in the 12th century when Gratian, a monk of Bologna,
compiled the largest collection of canonical decrees and texts then assembled, a
collection that has carried the popular name of the Decretum. Gratian’s complete Latin
title translated into English is A Concord of Discordant Canons. Gratian’s collection,
inspired by Justinian’s codification of Roman law, established the view that as the Roman
emperor had been the supreme source of Roman law, so was the pope the supreme
legislator for the church and its legal sphere. Canon law dealt with the regulation and
ordering of the clergy, the church, and the Christian population of Europe, since the pope
claimed exclusive jurisdiction in all matters touching marriage, wills, and areas, such as
education and heresy, that concerned the spiritual life of the church.
Canon law, using Roman law principles, terminology, and procedure, soon
demonstrated that it was capable of much growth. Later popes added collections of
decrees to the Decretum, and canon law, like Roman law, became the subject of study in
the universities. A large and growing number of young men who chose a clerical life
found the study of canon law a key to a successful career in the church. Not only did they
enter the administrative and legal services of popes, bishops, and abbots, but they found a
large and attractive area for their talents in the service of the kings and lesser rulers of
Europe, who could use their literacy and legal training in governmental offices. In
France, they found numerous positions of employment in the king’s household and in his
treasury and accounting department, and especially in the chancery, which issued royal
correspondence and helped to frame the king’s legislation. Most of all, they entered the
Parlement de Paris, the great royal law court, serving as judges, as staff assistants, and in
judicial capacities. They brought the influence of both Roman and canon law into the
field of royal justice and lawmaking.
The economic development of the 11th and 12th centuries produced a third area of
legal activity as the old Roman cities, commercially depressed for centuries, now, along
with newly founded towns, established autonomous urban governments with independent
judicial institutions. These towns developed a legal system, neither feudal, Roman, nor
customary, that administered the legal needs of the urban population and managed often
complex relations with the church and the monarchy. Rigaudière has shown how these
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