Note 204 — Chapter VII · DECLINE OF COMPURGATION.

The rapidity with which the study of the civil law diffused itself throughout the schools and the eagerness with which it was welcomed were the subject of indignant comment by the ecclesiastics of the day. As early as 1149 we find St. Bernard regretting that the laws of Justinian were already overshadowing those of God—“Et quidem quotidie perstrepent in palatio leges, sed Justiniani, non Domini” (De Consideratione, Lib. I. cap. iv.). Even more bitter were the complaints of Giraldus Cambrensis towards the end of the century. The highest of high churchmen, in deploring the decline of learning among the prelates and clergy of his age, he attributes it to the exclusive attention bestowed on the jurisprudence of Justinian, which already offered the surest prizes to cupidity and ambition, and he quotes in support of his opinion the dictum of his teacher Mainier, a professor in the University of Paris: “Episcopus autem ille, de quo nunc ultimo locuti sumus, inter superficiales numerari potuit, cujusmodi hodie multos novimus propter leges Justinianas, quæ literaturam, urgente cupiditatis et ambitionis incommodo, adeo in multis jam suffocarunt, quod magistrum Mainerium in auditorio scholæ suæ Parisius dicentem et damna sui temporis plangentem, audivi, vaticinium illud Sibillæ vere nostris diebus esse completum, hoc scilicet ‘Venient dies, et væ illis, quibus leges obliterabunt scientiam literarum’” (Gemm. Ecclesiast. Dist. II. cap. xxxvii.). This, like all other branches of learning, was as yet to a great extent in the hands of the clergy, though already were arising the precursors of those subtle and daring civil lawyers who were destined to do such yeoman’s service in abating the pretensions of the church.

It is somewhat singular to observe that at a period when the highest offices of the law were frequently appropriated by ecclesiastics, they were not allowed to perform the functions of advocates or counsel. See Horne’s Myrror of Justice, cap. II. sect. 5. There was good reason for prohibiting them from serving as judges, as Frederic II. did in 1235—“Idem erit laicus propter sententias sanguinum quas clerico scribere non liceat, et præterea ut si dilinquid in officio suo pena debita puniatur” (Nove Constitutiones Dom. Alberti, p. 46).