City of Lawyers

Anyone who thinks our contemporary world is overrun with lawyers may be reassured (or depressed) to know that the Middle Ages had it just as bad.

Blame it on Bologna, or specifically, on a man named Irnerius, the noble forebear of all the tribe, born in this city around 1055. Irnerius was hardly the ivory tower sort of scholar. In his day no one could afford such a luxury; there was serious work to be done. In fact Irnerius was a protegé of the great medieval Countess of Tuscany, Matilda of Canossa; it was she who first convinced him to take up the study of law and then made good use of his talents in diplomatic missions, although after her death Irnerius went over to the other side, serving Emperor Henry V.

But both sides had an interest in common: reviving Roman law to replace the many conflicting local codes, such as that of the Lombards in northern Italy, which were commonly based on archaic German tradition and feudal rights.