BARTOLOMEI, ENRICO (Henricus de Segusio or Segusia; Hostiensis). — Decretalist, born at Susa (Turin), died on 25 October 1271. He studied at Bologna, where he initially also attended courses in civil law. He in turn taught law at Paris. First consecrated bishop of Sisteron, he later became archbishop of Embrun and then, in 1261, was appointed cardinal bishop of Ostia, whence the appellation Hostiensis, by which he is also known.
His Summa decretalium, based on the Decretals of Gregory IX, was called Aurea because of the clarity and density of its scholarly information. Written around the middle of the thirteenth century and having gone through several editions, it is noteworthy for introducing a new method of expounding the text, by which the old system of simple exegesis was abandoned, consisting chiefly in the addition of glossae or notulae to the text. The new method is described as follows: « Primo ponendo casuni vel dicendo sensum litterae, secundo legendo litteram et exponendo et etiam construendo si difficilis appareat. Tertio inducendo similia. Quarto inducendo contraria, et solvendo et distinguendo. Quinto quaestiones faciendo et determinando. Sexto dicendo notabilia ad quae et qualiter induci debeat decretalis » (lib. V, tit. I, de magistris).
It should be noted that the method itself had already been anticipated by the decretists and subsequently became the ordinary teaching method in the German schools of law during the first half of the fourteenth century (cf. G. Kauffmann, Geschichte der deutschen Universitäten, Stuttgart 1888–96, II, pp. 347–48). Reintroduced into the Italian civil-law schools, it formed the basis of the new approach of the commentators or scholastics, which had Bartolo as its principal representative and was crystallized in the distich « Praemitto, scindo, summo casumque figuro; perlego, do causas, connoto et obicio ».
The Summa of the Ostian contains a significant reference to civil-law theories and, also in this respect, is a valuable source for the general reconstruction of the legal doctrine of the period. It also reveals a first attempt to modify the school of civil law by means of the age’s spirit of equity. B., moreover, has been indicated as the leader, within canonistic doctrine itself, of the approach based on equity, in opposition to the more rigid current headed instead by Sinibaldo dei Fieschi (later Pope Innocent IV), who advocated the strict interpretation of the rules (cf. B. Kuhlmann, Der Gesetzesbegriff beim hl. Thomas von Aquin im Lichte des Rechtsstudiums seiner Zeit, Bonn 1912, p. 22). Because of his profound knowledge of both laws, B. was called monarcha utriusque iuris. In his controversy with the civil lawyers, he particularly opposed the glossator Giovanni Bassiano and his disciple Niccolò Furioso.
He also wrote a Lectura on the same Gregorian decretals, composed with great erudition. The work is later than the Summa and appears to have been elaborated after 1268. He is also the author of a Commentario on the Novellae constitutiones of Innocent IV, and finally of a Tractatus super electione, completed by Guglielmo de Mandagoto.