Ugo di Porta Ravegnana

Jurist and Master of Roman Law (Bologna, early 12th c. - Bologna, approx. 1171)

Mens legum’. With this epitaph, the dying Irnerio, in the imaginative words of the judge from Lodi, Ottone Morena, last salutes the scholar Ugo di Porta Ravegnana, as he stood next to him alongside his other three disciples, Bulgaro, Martino Gosia and Iacopo di Porta Ravegnana. Like the others, the young Ugo, the “mind of the law”, set up his own school of Glossators, scholars seeking to bring order to the chaos of the Middle Ages through Roman Law.

Ugo di Porta Ravegnana was born in the early 12th century in Bologna, in a district that still takes its name from the old gate which marked the road to Ravenna, Porta Ravennana or Ravegnana, and where the famous Garisenda and Asinelli towers were being built in those very years.

Together with Bulgaro, Martino Gosia and Iacopo, he became famous as a Doctor of Law, a disciple of the illustrious Irnerio and a successor of the renowned School of Glossators inaugurated by the latter.

Like his fellow jurists, in addition to teaching, Ugo dedicated his work life to providing private and public advice, participating actively in the fortunes of the city's first podestà, Guido di Raniero da Sasso, who came from a long line of vassals of Matilda of Canossa.

In 1158, at the Diet of Roncaglia, at which Frederick Barbarossa succeeded in securing dominion over the rebellious cities of the Po Valley, the 'four disciples' were specially summoned to validate his claims, bringing with them the law of Rome, studied and rediscovered through the Corpus Iuris Civilis. By means of the Constitutio de regalibus, the Emperor was thus able to impose on the Communes control over the communication routes, the exercise of justice, the collection of taxes, the authority to mint money and the right to wage war, as well as the figure of the podestà, a magistrate with administrative and legal powers.

The 'four' had already met Barbarossa on his arrival in Bologna in 1155, the year in which the Emperor probably arranged for the Constitutio Habita to be included in the Corpus Iuris, guaranteeing independence to the University of Bologna and offering imperial protection to foreign students, freed from the city's jurisdiction and subjected, by free choice, to that of the bishop or their teacher.

Ugo's prestige transcended the borders of his native territory, so much so that there is a document from 1162, included in the Regestum Volterranum, in which the consuls of Siena issue a ruling in which the figure of Ugo di Porta Ravennate, imperial judge and advisor to the consuls, predominates. 

In addition to numerous glosse on various parts of the Justinian Corpus, one of his alleged manuscripts has survived, now preserved in Paris, in which are collected some Distinctiones, practical and useful decompositions of the questions of law examined.

The last known document by Ugo dates back to 1166, while there is a notarial document from 1171 in which his wife Isabella is referred to as a widow. It may thus be inferred that, like Bulgaro and Martino, he too died towards the end of the 1160s.