BARTOLUS 5 7) , Italian jurist, the most famous master of the dialectical school, was born at Sassoferrato, whence his usual style of Bartolus de Saxoferrato. He studied law under Cinus at Perugia and under Oldradus and Jacobus de Belvisio at Bologna. He held the chair of law at Perugia from 1343 on wards, and made the law school of Perugia as famous as that of Bologna. A magnificent monument was raised to his memory in the church of San Francisco at Perugia.
Many writers have sought to account for the fame of Bartolus by attributing to him the introduction of the dialectical method ; but this had been employed by Odofredus, a pupil of Accursius, in the 13th century, and the successors of Odofredus had abused it by burying the subject-matter of their writings under dialectical forms. Bartolus reformed this abuse and avoided excess; but his great reputation was probably due to his revival of the exegetical system of teaching law. He imparted to his lectures a practical interest by making use of the experience he had gained as an assessor to the courts at Todi and Pisa. His treatises On Evidence and On Procedure are his best-known works ; his Commentary on the Code of Justinian has sometimes been exalted almost to an equal authority with the code itself.