ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the life and work of Bartolo da Sassoferrato (1313/14–57), the leading jurist of the fourteenth century and probably one of the most distinguished jurists of the Western legal tradition. His commentaries on the Corpus Iuris Civilis and his political treatises are his most valuable legacy to the European legal culture. His writings highlight the deep unity of the human person and underline the connections of law with ethics and theology. In the microcosm of the Italian communal cities, Bartolo elaborated theoretical models that allowed for coordinating the novelties of history (particularly medieval laws) with the legacy of Roman law and with the common law of the Catholic Church: that is, with the two laws (utrumque ius) that would remain the foundation of the education of jurists in continental Europe and later in the New World until the age of codifications. His political ideas stem from the faith, shared with other great contemporaries like Dante Alighieri, in the empire as a universal structure capable of guaranteeing peace and justice among peoples. His life and work are a testimony of a faith in the role of the jurist as an intellectual educator of civil conscience.
