Accursius

He is notable for his organization of the glosses, the medieval comments on Justinian's codification of Roman law, the Corpus Juris Civilis.

A pupil of Azo, he first practised law in his native city, and was afterwards appointed professor at Bologna, where he had great success as a teacher.

While Accursius was employed in this work, legend has it that, hearing of a similar one proposed and begun by Odofred, another lawyer of Bologna, he feigned indisposition, interrupted his public lectures, and shut himself up, till with the utmost expedition he had accomplished his design.

The authority of the Gloss is probably due to Accursius' very exhaustive coverage of the civil law, in the course of which he not only pointed out its problems but unlike his predecessors also offered solutions for them.

[5] For his magnum opus, Accursius was extolled by the lawyers of his own and the immediately succeeding age as the greatest glossator, and he was even called the idol of jurisconsults, but those of later times formed a lower estimate of his merits.