LEGAL RHETORIC OF GLOSSATORS

PERSPECTIVE BETWEEN UNIVERSITIES AND PRAXIS OF COMMENTATORS

Abstract

The history of the revival of Roman law in universities in the late Middle Ages is intertwined with the social and political role of the Catholic Church at that time. Under the methodological framework of the Trivium, the Digest was taught in rhetoric classes at nascent universities, allowing its contents to be unraveled and handled first by professors during the period of the glossators, and later by jurists linked to the school of commentators. With the development of the school of commentators, the metalanguage (glosses) produced at the founding of the universities was linked to Canon Law, which functioned as the hermeneutic mechanism for updating the law, thus enabling a shift from theory to practice. Consequently, with the commentators, the knowledge produced in universities enabled a new social and political role for that institution, since it was an instrument for the resolution of disputes submitted to the law.