Maurice Keen

The ‘ Somnium ’ of John of Legnano

The Somnium of John of Legnano, the great Bolognese lawyer of the fourteenth century, was first properly brought to the attention of scholars by G. W. Coopland in 1926. Professor Cooplands chief concern was with the relationship between this work and the much more famous Somnium Viridarii , composed about 1375 at the court of King Charles V of France, whose author made some substantial borrowings from Johns slightly earlier work. Though he supplied a synopsis of its content, Coopland gave it as his opinion that Johns work was not in itself of any great interest, apart from the section in it which is devoted to a defence of papal monarchy, a section which, as the author makes clear, incorporates into the Somnium a tract on this matter which he had composed previously. This probably is the most interesting part of Johns much larger and more ambitious work, which seems to have been written in 1372, but our opinion is that the other sections have rather more in them to reward the reader than Coopland suggested. This is the justification for an attempt to describe the work in more detail than he did and to discuss briefly some parts of its content and arguments.