‘Os aureum’. With this epitaph, the dying Irnerio, in the imaginative words of the judge from Lodi, Ottone Morena, last salutes the scholar Bulgaro, as he stood next to him alongside his other three disciples, Martino Gosia, Iacopo and Ugo di Porta Ravegnana. Perhaps the most important of the four, Bulgaro, “Mouth of Gold”, was the most dutiful in following the Justinian precepts of the Corpus Iuris Civilis, analysed and imparted in his renowned School.
There are few biographical references concerning Bulgaro, one of the ‘four disciples’ of Irnerio.
Presumably born in Bologna to a non-noble family, he and the other disciples Martino Gosia, Iacopo and Ugo di Porta Ravegnana followed the great master, who taught them Roman law and entrusted them with the task of pursuing the systematic study of the Corpus Iuris Civilis, his interpretation and his teaching.
Like the others, Bulgaro opened his own school on the use of glosse: annotations placed in between the lines (from the 12th century in the margins) of manuscripts and their copies containing commentaries, references and explanations by the scholar.
In all likelihood, Bulgaro gave his lessons at home, the location of which is still commemorated today by a chapel built in the mid-16th century inside the Palazzo dell’Archiginnasio, named Santa Maria dei Bulgari, probably in memory of a pre-existing chapel linked to the quarter where the illustrious jurist and his family had found lodgings and prospered.
His school, probably the most renowned in the city, soon clashed with that of his colleague Martino Gosia, who differed from the rigorous line taught by Irnerio, advocating greater flexibility in the interpretation of Roman Law and a particular openness towards Canon and Germanic Law.
Bulgaro and his followers, instead, advocated greater philological rigour in following the Justinian text, taking justice to a high level of abstraction and intransigence.
Like the other three disciples, Bulgaro too is referred to by contemporary and later sources as both legis doctor, in reference to his pedagogical role, and as causidicus, confirming his commitment as an advisor in private and public cases.
The most famous involved Frederick Barbarossa.
The Emperor, who had come to Italy to settle the disagreements with the Communes, arrived in Bologna in 1155, when - as an anonymous chronicler from Bergamo testifies - he had the opportunity to meet the doctors (certainly the ‘four disciples’) and their scholars. In all likelihood, during that meeting the Emperor was presented with a series of requests for the protection of the nascent University of Bologna. These appeared in the Constitutio Habita, a document that may be considered the institutional certification of the Alma Mater Studiorum and the first international statement of the birth of the university institution in Europe. In the Constitutio Habita, the Emperor prohibited any kind of reprisal on foreign scholars, guaranteeing them his protection and exempting them from the local jurisdiction; instead, they could choose to submit to the judgement of the bishop or their master.
It is not yet known whether this decree was issued in 1155 or whether it was included in the Corpus Iuris Civilis after the following meeting between the four disciples and Frederick Barbarossa in Roncaglia in 1158. At this second meeting, Bulgaro and his Bolognese colleagues were specially called upon to certify the imperial rights of sovereignty over the Italic kingdom and thus over the Communes from a legal point of view. The ‘four disciples’ validated the claims of the Holy Roman Empire, which involved depriving Italian cities of their royal regalia (rights) and imposing on them the figure of the podestà, a magistrate with administrative and legal powers.
The observance of Roman imperial laws, in the complex and fractious situation existing in Europe at the time, did not result in retaliation against the University of Bologna, which had simply reintroduced past regulations through an entirely abstract view of public law. Bologna itself observed the ruling of the Diet of Roncaglia, at least until the city joined the Lombard League in 1167, which eventually led to Barbarossa’s capitulation on the Treaty of Constance (1183), as a result of which Italian cities regained part of their autonomy.
However, the time of the four disciples was now over; they had left their mark on Bologna and entrusted the Schools of Glossators with continuing their work.
Bulgaro probably died in 1166 and, as a plaque on the façade of the church of San Procolo reminds us, he was buried in its churchyard, next to his eternal rival Martino Gosia and in front of the place that for almost five centuries remained the official seat of the assemblies of law students from abroad.