The Severan dynasty, sometimes called the Septimian dynasty, was an Ancient Roman imperial dynasty that ruled the Roman Empire between 193 and 235, during the Roman imperial period. The dynasty was founded by the emperor Septimius Severus, who rose to power after the Year of the Five Emperors as the victor of the civil war of 193–197, and his wife, Julia Domna. After the short reigns and assassinations of their two sons, Caracalla and Geta, who succeeded their father in the government of the empire, Julia Domna's relatives themselves assumed power by raising Elagabalus and then Severus Alexander to the imperial office.
The Corpus JurisCivilis is the modern name for a collection of fundamental works in jurisprudence, enacted from 529 to 534 by order of Byzantine Emperor Justinian I. It is also sometimes referred to metonymically after one of its parts, the Code of Justinian.
Baldus de Ubaldis was an Italian jurist, and a leading figure in Medieval Roman Law and the school of Postglossators.
Jacques Cujas was a French legal expert. He was prominent among the legal humanists or mos gallicus school, which sought to abandon the work of the medieval Commentators and concentrate on ascertaining the correct text and social context of the original works of Roman law.
John Selden was an English jurist, a scholar of England's ancient laws and constitution and scholar of Jewish law. He was known as a polymath; John Milton hailed Selden in 1644 as "the chief of learned men reputed in this land".
Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator, commonly known as Cassiodorus, was a Christian, Roman statesman, renowned scholar of antiquity, and writer serving in the administration of Theodoric the Great, king of the Ostrogoths. Senator was part of his surname, not his rank. He also founded a monastery, Vivarium, where he worked extensively the last three decades of his life.
Dictys Cretensis, i.e. Dictys of Crete of Knossos was a legendary companion of Idomeneus during the Trojan War, and the purported author of a diary of its events, that deployed some of the same materials worked up by Homer for the Iliad. The story of his journal, an amusing fiction addressed to a knowledgeable Alexandrian audience, came to be taken literally during Late Antiquity.
Gaius was a Roman jurist. Little is known about his personal life, including his name. It is also difficult to ascertain the span of his life, but it is assumed he lived from AD 110 to at least AD 179, as he wrote on legislation passed within that time.
Anton Friedrich Justus Thibaut, was a German jurist and musician.
Geoffroi Jacques Flach was a French jurist and historian born at Strasbourg, Alsace, of a family known at least as early as the 16th century, when Sigismond Flach was the first professor of law at University of Strasbourg.
Bartolus de Saxoferrato was an Italian law professor and one of the most prominent continental jurists of Medieval Roman Law. He belonged to the school known as the commentators or postglossators. The admiration of later generations of civil lawyers is shown by the adage nemo bonus íurista nisi bartolista — no one is a good lawyer unless he is a Bartolist.
Accursius was an Italian jurist. He is notable for his organization of the glosses, the medieval comments on Justinian's codification of Roman law, the Corpus Juris Civilis. He was not proficient in the classics, but he was called "the Idol of the Jurisconsults".
Odofredus was an Italian jurist. He was born in Ostia and moved to Bologna, studying law under Jacobus Balduinus and Franciscus Accursius. After working as an advocate in Italy and France, he became a law professor in Bologna in 1228. The commentaries on Roman law attributed to him are valuable as showing the growth of the study of law in Italy, and for their biographical details of the jurists of the 12th and 13th centuries. Odofredus died at Bologna in 1265.
Paulus Castrensis was an Italian jurist of the 14th century.
Azo of Bologna or Azzo or Azolenus was an influential Italian jurist and a member of the school of the so-called glossators. Born circa 1150 in Bologna, Azo studied under Joannes Bassianus and became professor of civil law at Bologna. He was a teacher of Franciscus Accursius. He is sometimes known as Azo Soldanus, from his father's surname, and also Azzo Porcius, to distinguish him from later famous Italians named Azzo. He died circa 1230.
James Ferguson was a Scottish astronomer. He is known as the inventor and improver of astronomical and other scientific apparatus, as a striking instance of self education and as an itinerant lecturer.
Mordechai ben Hillel HaKohen, also known as The Mordechai or, by some Sephardic scholars, as The Mordechie, was a 13th-century German rabbi and posek. His chief legal commentary on the Talmud, referred to as The Mordechai, is one of the sources of the Shulchan Aruch. He was killed in the Rintfleisch massacres in 1298.
Bulgarus was a twelfth-century Italian jurist, born in Bologna.
The Consulate of the Sea was a quasi-judicial body set up in the Crown of Aragon, later to spread throughout the Mediterranean basin, to administer maritime and commercial law. The term may also refer to a celebrated collection of maritime customs and ordinances in Catalan language, also known in English as The Customs of the Sea, compiled over the 14th and 15th centuries and published at Valencia in or before 1494.
The Novellae Constitutiones, or Justinian's Novels, are now considered one of the four major units of Roman law initiated by Roman emperor Justinian I in the course of his long reign. The other three pieces are: the Codex Justinianus, the Digest, and the Institutes. Justinian's quaestor Tribonian was primarily responsible for compiling these last three. Together, the four parts are known as the Corpus Juris Civilis. Whereas the Code, Digest, and Institutes were designed by Justinian as coherent works, the Novels are diverse laws enacted after 534 that never were officially compiled during his reign.
Lectura Institutionum, 13th-century manuscript. London, British Library, Royal MS, Royal 4.B.II.
Summa cum glossis Bassiani, 13th-century manuscript. Reims, Bibliothèque municipale, Fonds manuscrits, Ms. 684.
