mingled with such scraps of the works of certain celebrated Roman jurisconsults as these barbarian lawgivers had the means or the judgment to incorporate with them, and adapted to the alterations already effected in the government, and institutions of the van quished countries. The edict of Theodoric also, which was published about the same time, retained many traces, though by no means so strong or so definite as the Breviarium, of the Roman jurisprudence. But since the period when these rude medleys of legislation had been first promulgated, the doctrines of the feudal system had attained such a luxuriant growth as, in great measure, to choke up or eradicate whatever principles or institutions may have been transplanted from the ancient laws of Rome. It has sometimes been hastily and incon siderately advanced, that all the traces of the civil law had absolutely disappeared, after the general irruption of the barbarians into the Roman territory. But this opinion is refuted by the best historical testimony. The Roman law, incorporated and amalga mated with that of the German nations, prob ably maintained its influence as prescriptive custom, after its immediate authority, as de rived from the codes of Alaric and the other barbarian legislators, had ceased to be either respected or acknowledged. Some shocks it undoubtedly received from the feudal sys tem; and, indeed, it is sufficiently evident that, in those cases where one was found in compatible with the other, the ancient law must have been forced to give way; but (except in the West Gothic empire, where it was expressly annulled) its general validity was never directly impugned. That some portion of it, therefore, and probably a very considerable one, sunk into desuetude, is a fact to be attributed solely to the gradual innovations introduced by other systems, and to the effects of time, which in these unlettered ages, often consigned mere acts of positive legislation to rapid and premature neglect. If it could be admitted that the civil law
of Rome had fallen into complete disuse be fore the beginning of the twelfth century, it would follow almost as a necessary conse quence that the study of it must have been altogether laid aside; and accordingly those who believe in the absolute extinction of the Roman jurisprudence can have no difficulty in giving credit to the accounts which repre sent it as wholly unknown to the learned, until the discovery of the Pandects of Jus tinian. But independent of the fact that the authority of the Roman law was never wholly invalidated, and of the inference which may thence be drawn that the study of it was never wholly neglected, there is very satis factory evidence to disprove such a supposi tion. In Savigny's learned and elaborate history of the Roman law during the Middle Ages, several testimonies are collected, which show that the study was prosecuted in dif ferent schools of Western Europe, in Eng land as well as elsewhere, and, among other places, at York, between the seventh and eleventh centuries. There are also traces to be found of a school at law which existed at Ravenna in the eleventh century, and which Savigny not only conjectures to have been the same establishment afterwards so cele brated at Bologna, but to be identical with the law school organized by Justinian at Rome, whence, indeed, a writer of the thir teenth century named Odofredus expressly declares it to have been transferred. But, however this may be, it is very certain that for some time previous to the epoch when the Pandects are supposed to have been brought to light, the University of Bologna had boasted its professors of civil law. One Pepo, of whom little is known but the name, is said to have delivered his lectures there towards the beginning of the twelfth cen tury; and his successor or contemporary, the celebrated Irnerius, who has been honored with the epithets of " illuminator et lucerna juris" is known to have attracted thither a considerable number of students at least as early as the year 1125. The canonists also
