ROMAN LAW HISTORICAL SCIENCES 313 



produced a long succession of such teachers, whose labors brought 

 not only renown but wealth to the cities where they taught. 



For understanding the work of painters some knowledge of this 

 sort is even more needful. In the great Florentine chapter-house of 

 Santa Maria Novella, which Ruskin has so elaborately described, 

 there is a fresco depicting the seven divine sciences personified by 

 as many female figures. Beneath the figure which represents the 

 science of Civil Law sits the Emperor Justinian. She carries a sword 

 and a globe, while he holds in his hands the Institutes. No one could 

 appreciate the point of this personification unless he knew the 

 position of Roman law in medieval Italy and the reverence with 

 which Justinian was regarded, a reverence to which Dante in his 

 Paradiso has borne witness. Again in the Sala della Segnatura in the 

 Vatican, we find, among frescoes representing religious scenes, such 

 as that of Moses giving the Tables of the Law, a great fresco by 

 Pierino del Vaga which sets forth the delivery of the Code by Jus- 

 tinian to Tribonian. This is matched by another fresco which depicts 

 Pope Gregory handing down the Decretals. To understand these 

 subjects we must know something of the causes which led men to 

 regard the civil and canon laws as the very foundation-stones of 

 justice. 



In other cases we find inscriptions to interpret. For instance, in the 

 Sala della Segnatura Raphael has written Rerum divinarum notitia 

 over the head of his Theology, and lus suum unicuique tribuens over 

 the head of his Justice, thus quoting direct!} 7 from Ulpian and the 

 Institutes. Similarly Ambrogio Lorenzetti, in his great fresco of the 

 Sienese Council Chamber, places two angels labeled Distributiva 

 and Commutativa above his female figure personifying Justice, and 

 thus refers to St. Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle. Here we need 

 Roman Law to explain the one inscription and Philosophy to ex- 

 plain the other, just as for the great mosaic of the Lateran Triclinium 

 the history of Politics can alone furnish an adequate commentary. 1 



After this brief and most imperfect survey of the relations existing 

 between Roman law and other sciences we may perhaps ask our- 

 selves why it is that AVC find its remains and trace its influence in so 

 many different quarters. To this question a reply is furnished by 

 two historical facts. 



First, the vitality of the Roman Empire was such that it lasted 

 actually for a thousand years in the East, and theoretically much 

 longer still in the West of Europe. Secondly, the law created by it, 

 being a purely intellectual product, was even more lasting than the 

 Empire itself; so that the barbarians, who destroyed the outward 

 and visible signs of the Roman power, were themselves subjugated 

 1 Bryce, Holy Roman Empire (8th ed.) p. 117. 



