ABSTRACT
The history of civil law in the ancient world began and ended with the production of a text: began with the XII Tables and ended with the Codes, Digest, Institutes and Novels of Justinian. The first five centuries of the second Christian millennium are a decisive turning point in the history of civil law. While the theologians, philosophers and grammarians had their texts, the lawyers had nothing of equivalence. The scholars who elucidated the Digest in this manner were known as the Glossators, and their work dominated the study of civil law at Bologna for two centuries, during which time the accumulated glosses extended until they were longer than the Digest itself. One of the first bodies of contemporary law to benefit from an application of the glossatorial technique was the law of the Church.
