CHAPTER XI - LAW

Summary

A Serjeant of the Lawe ware and wise,

That often hadde y been at the Parvis.

Chaucer's Prologue.

In old times the faculty of Law undertook to teach the jus utrumque, and to give separate degrees in Canon and Civil Law.

The old English Canon Law consisted of the body of legatine and provincial canons, promulgated and adopted in this country, as well as the Roman corpus of Decretals, Clementines and Extravagants collected in the twelfth and three following centuries. The decretum of Gratian of course included Mercator's forged additions to Isidore, on which so much of the pretensions of the See of Rome is founded.

Though there were separate degrees in Canon and Civil law, there was yet a close connexion between the two, so that (as Mr Mullinger shews) when Occam attacked one he aimed a blow at the other. They were connected also in the university course, i.e. a candidate for the doctor's degree was not allowed to enter on Canon law until he had heard lectures in Civil for three years. It is interesting to observe from the information gathered in Mr J. B. Mullinger's early History of Cambridge (1873), how the study of law was from the first little encouraged in the universities; and, as respect for learning and culture increased, the law of the period met with disinterested discouragement.