ABSTRACT
Legal historians have devoted considerable attention to the life and works of Master Vacarius, especially since the nineteenth century. Although John Selden mentioned him in his 1647 Ad Fletam, as did Sarti in the eighteenth century in his major historical study of the Glossators, it was only in 1820 that Carl Friedrich Christian Wenck published the first monograph on this subject with the title Magister Vacarius. The only sources about Vacarius from his own time are the works of John of Salisbury, Robert of Torigny and Gervase of Canterbury, along with a few deeds and other notices, listed in Southern’s 1976 article – a list that may well be expanded. Vacarius’ teaching activities in Lincoln, using his Liber Pauperum, must be placed in the 1170s and 1180s. According to Stein, it is conceivable that Vacarius travelled from his parish in Norwell to Lincoln ‘to hold classes in civil law’.
