Francesco Accursio Biography

Francesco Accursio

(Francisco or Francesco d'Accorso or Accursio; Bagnolo, c. 1185-Florence ?, c. 1263) Jurisconsult Italian.Glosser and renovator of Roman law, he is especially remembered as the author of the Great Gloss .

Francesco Accursio

Francisco Accursio was the greatest jurist of the Bolognese school, a glorious expression of Italian civilization in the Middle Ages who, worthily linked to the Roman legal tradition, not only carried out a passionate work of investigation and reconstruction, but also gave rise to that right Common that was the Roman law of the Middle Ages, from which the pandectists of the 19th century later descended to found the modern science of law.The researchers of this school were called "Glosadores", from "gloss", literal rectification of an interpretive nature and often also commentary on controversial passages, through a comparative study of them or also through an original reconstruction.

Of peasant origin (the surname Accursio is probably a nickname), he studied law in Bologna under the direction of Azone, and later professed at that university for nearly forty years.Continuing the work of his predecessors, he commented and glossed Justinian's Corpus Juris , which had once again achieved a reputation just over a century earlier, and compiled, systematically ordering, his comments and those of the previous masters, thus composing the Great Glosa (also called Magna glossa or Glossa ordinary ), a synthesis of the elaboration carried out in the Study of Bologna and nucleus of that common Roman law that had to spread by almost all Europe.

Accursio's Gloss was described as great or great because, in addition to being the last truly remarkable, it was the most complete: it contained a review of all the previous ones, which they found in that of Accursio a higher critical systematization.The glosses processed by Accursio are approximately one hundred thousand (62,577 for the Digest , 21,933 for the Code , 4,737 for the Institutions , 7,013 for the Authentic and a few hundred for feudal books.The fame of Accursio's work was so great that it gave rise to the famous adage Quod non agnoscit Glossa non agnoscit Curia .

Accursio's other works obtained similar but less important: writings on the Libri feudorum , a Summa on the Authenticum and a Speculum iuris , today lost.Accursio, who has been called the "idol of the glossers", apparently died in Florence, where he had moved between 1252 and 1255, but was buried in the Church of Saint Francis of Bologna, where his tomb is still preserved: "Sepulchrum Accursii, glosatoris legum, et Francisci eius filii." He had a daughter and two sons, also legal scholars; of the sons, Francisco followed in the footsteps of his father, and nnoying in Bologna, in Oxford and again in Bologna, and incorporating new glosses to Accursian work.