ROMAN LAW HISTORICAL SCIENCES 293 



flourish because they are popular, not because they are compulsory, 

 so did the study of Roman law in the Middle Ages. And just as there 

 are now some who deplore that scientific men should derive wealth 

 from their science, instead of being content to pursue it from pure 

 love, so the twelfth century complained that many cultivated the 

 law, not for its beauty, but for its profits. There was, however, much 

 genuine intellectual fervor which spread from Italy even to Paris 

 and Oxford. That is a pretty story and one very characteristic of 

 the period which Professor Holland has preserved, of the two Frisian 

 brothers, Emo and Addo, taking turns at Oxford to sit up all night 

 copying the law-book of Vacarius. 1 Peter of Blois, a Frenchman 

 who had studied in Bologna under the great Irnerius and who became 

 Archdeacon of Bath, informs us that he used to read the Code and 

 Digest for sheer enjoyment. He has even described to us his own 

 enthusiasm for legal studies, which was doubtless typical. "That 

 ancient law, " he says, "with its magnificent furniture of words, had 

 powerfully enticed me and had intoxicated my mind." 2 



There was, indeed, some opposition to this legal furore, partly 

 because it distracted the minds of the clergy from their spiritual 

 duties, partly because it was thought to add to the law's delay, 

 and partly because it conflicted with ancient customs of the land. 

 Thus it has been shown that the famous prohibition of the teaching 

 of civil law at the University of Paris, by Pope Honorius III in 

 1219, was issued at the request of the French king, who did not wish 

 his dominions, which like England had their indigenous common 

 law, to be invaded by a new and foreign legal system. 3 The Con- 

 stitutions of Clarendon in 1164 had represented a similar English 

 protest couched in a different form. 



But despite occasional checks the Roman law has, except in the 

 case of Hungary, swept steadily and victoriously over the whole 

 continent of Europe. This result has been largely due to the influence 

 in early times of the clergy, the backbone of the educated class, who 

 had in their canon law a borrowed and dilute civil law, and who 

 also studied the pure civil law with much diligence. In 1245 the 

 great lawyer Fieschi, better known as Pope Innocent IV, made 

 provision for the teaching of Roman law at the Papal capital, and 

 his name deserves to be particularly honored by students of juris- 

 prudence, since he is said on high authority to have been the first 

 jurist who distinctly conceived the universitas, our corporation, as 

 a fictitious person. 4 



The history of the spread of Roman law throughout the Eu- 

 ropean continent and in other parts of the world need not and 



1 English Hist. Review, vol. vi, p. 247. 



2 Petrus Blosensis, Epist. 26, in Migne's Patrologia, vol. 207. 



3 Beaune, Fragments de Droit et d'Histoire, p. 97. 



4 Maitland's preface to Gierke's Political Theories of the Middle Ages, p. xix. 



