Padovani, Andrea, Dall’alba al crepusculo del commento. Giovanni da Imola (1375–ca. 1436) e la giurisprudenza del suo tempo

Abstract

Among legal historians, the ius commune is often implicitly divided in two periods: from the dawn of Bologna University up to the end of the fourteenth century, and from the early sixteenth century onwards. Apart from a few works, many of which focus on extremely specific points, the fifteenth century remains very much a neglected period. Some attention has been given to some (few) great jurists, from Paolo di Castro to Alessandro Tartagni and Giason del Maino, but mostly as bright exceptions in an otherwise uninspiring, grey sky. The more this sky gets ignored, the more this prejudice acquires strength. This alone would already be reason enough to welcome a new monograph centred on a fifteenth-century law professor, Giovanni Nicoletti da Imola. The main reason to do so, however, lies in the superb quality of the work, and in the Author’s profound knowledge of the jurist as well as of the period in which he lived. Giovanni da Imola received his doctorate in civil law in 1397, and five years later that in canon law. Thereafter, he pursued a long and successful academic career at some of the most important Italian universities, from Bologna to Padua, from Ferrara to Siena. Apart from writing a few consilia, Giovanni just taught. He was neither involved in the political life of any of those cities, nor was he particularly interested in theological or philosophical debates. In short, he was an important jurist, but he never became a legal star. This is what makes him most interesting, because he represents his contemporaries much better than, say, a Tartagni. The same can be seen also in Giovanni’s works. Unlike jurists such as Paolo di Castro, Giovanni by and large wrote his consilia for the middle class of the time, especially for merchants and middle-rank clergy (with the conspicuous exception of a consilium written for pope Gregory XII, 105–7). The nobility does not rank among his usual clients – but, again, how many jurists did habitually write for a count, and how many for a merchant? The Author’s focus on the work of Giovanni da Imola is extremely meticulous, and this is all the more remarkable given the objective difficulty of the task, for the whole library of Giovanni da Imola burned in 1422, fourteen years before his death. Among the most interesting fruits of the Author’s thorough labour mention should be made of the beginning of Giovanni’s lectura on Gregory IX’s Decretals: from the very incipit to X. 1,1,2 (included), the text is actually written by Zabarella (62–65). Similarly meticulous is the attention to the structure of Giovanni’s comment. Following in the footsteps of his teacher Antonio da Budrio, Giovanni shows a more relaxed attitude towards the text of the law, far from the rigid scholastic schemes (and especially remote from the old scheme of Cino da Pistoia). This may be seen both in Giovanni’s focus on the rational of a provision, as well as in his frequent use of short notabilia to flag up the most important points for the reader. By contrast, the use of contraria, oppositiones and quaestiones (so widespread among his contemporaries) is remarkably limited, as if Giovanni perceived their