A FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE ALCIAT. 21 



and he was not less ready than Vesalius to recognise 

 the greatness of the Milanese physician and philoso- 

 pher. Jerome, on his part, seems to have admired Alciat 

 who was eight years his senior more than any other 

 of his literary friends ; he was even moved to write 

 a brief sketch of his life 1 . Alciat, the only son of a 

 noble family, was born in a village of the Milanese from 

 which he took his name Alzate, near Como. He 

 studied at Pavia and Bologna. He became doctor of 

 laws, and having noble birth and a rich patrimony, 

 as well as very great ability and eloquence, his talents 

 were acknowledged early. Already at the age of twenty- 

 two he was a professor at Pavia, where he wrote his Legal 

 Paradoxes " Paradoxa Juris." That was a work which 

 created uproar among all old-fashioned commentators upon 

 jurisprudence; it expounded with new vigour the best 

 principles of Roman law, and laid the strong foundations 

 of its author's fame. Alciat in Italy, and Zase in Ger- 

 many, are indeed still remembered as the first liberal expo- 

 nents of the Roman jurisprudence. At the beginning of his 

 practice, this shrewd jurist had made himself remarkable 

 when, as advocate in a certain witch-process, he opposed 

 with all his energy the barbarous custom of extracting con- 



Vita Andreas Alciati. Opera, Tom. ix. pp. 569, 570. In the sketch 

 of Alciat given above, the personal details are all taken from the notes 

 left by Cardan. Whatever is there said more than Cardan tells, will 

 be found in Ersch und Griiber's Allgemeine Encyklopadie. 



