GLOSSES AND GLOSSATORS OF CANON LAW: Terms applied to the commentaries and commentators upon canon law. The pattern for a treatment of canon law and of the collections which contain it was given about the beginning of the twelfth century in the Bologna school of Roman law among the so-called "Legists," where in the second half of that century lectures were delivered on the work of Gratian, author of the first part of the Corpus juris canonici, the Decretum (see Canon Law, II., § 7). Alongside the Legists thus arose schools of Canonists, Decretists, and Decretalists. The resulting literary activity busied itself in glosses or short explanations first of words and phrases, later of the subject-matter of the sources of canon law, which glosses were either interlinear or marginal. The books of law were supplied with abstracts (summae), illustrations (casus) and rules (notabilia, brocarda). The usefulness of these earlier glosses and their continuous employment tended to produce still others until at length a comprehensive and rich body of comment developed which became digested into the Apparatus, lecturae, commentarii of the period subsequent to 1400. Among the glossators on the work of Gratian were his pupil Paucapalea, Rolandus Bandinelli (afterward Pope Alexander III., 1159-81), Rufinus, Stephen of Tournay (d. 1203), Johannes Faventinus, bishop of Faenza (1160-90), Sicard, bishop of Cremona (1185-1215), and Johannes Teutonicus (d. 1245 or 1246). The work of the last-named, which depends upon the labors of his predecessors, is the Glossa ordinaria (c. 1215) to the Decreta. The glossa ordinaria of the collection of decretals of Gregory IX. originated with Bernard of Botone, professor and chancellor of Bologna, who used the labors of Vincent of Spain (c. 1240), Gottfried of Trani (d. 1245), and Sinibaldus Friscus, later Pope Innocent IV. Among the glossators of the Liber sextus was Johann Andrea, whose work is the glosses ordinaria upon the Liber sextus; he also made the glosses ordinaria to the Clementina. Inasmuch as the work of these men brought about reciprocal activity between the Church and the school, their results have not merely a literary interest, but a practical one, and they are of importance for the history of canon law.

(P. Hinschius.)

Bibliography: M. Sarti and M. Fattorini, De claris archigymnasii Bononiensis professoribus, ed. C. Albicinius and C. Malagola, Bonona, 1888-96; F. C. von Savigny, Geschichte des römischen Rechts im Mittelalter, vols. iii.-vii., Heidelberg, 1843-51; J. F. von Schulte, Geschichte der Quellen and Literatur des canonischen Rechts, vols. i.-ii., Stuttgart, 1875-77; R. Ritter von Scherer, Handbuch des Kirchenrechte, i. 254, Graz, 1886; KL, v. 716-717.