LEGAL BROCARDS. — Some hold that the expression brocardia was derived through corruption from the word burcardus, the term by which the Decretum of Burcardo di Worms is supposed to have been referred to by transference, otherwise known as the Collectanea canonum or Liber decretorum.
The purpose of the legal literary genre of the b. was to formulate the general principles of law in maxims and at the same time to provide both the opportunity and the framework for a logical elaboration of the law.
The general principles originally derived, as arguments, from individual texts and annotated (argumentum, nota, notabilia) in their margins were subsequently extracted, supplied with the supporting texts, and juxtaposed with the contrary general principles, which were likewise presented with the texts supporting them. Logical connections between the opposing principles were regularly established (often by means of the distinctiones), and the grounds for their reconciliation (solutiones contrariorum) were inferred. In this way a logical system of general principles was reached which constituted the basis of the legal dialectic of the period. A typical, fully developed example of this complex genre of legal literature in the field of civil law is offered, at the end of the twelfth century, by the glossator Pillio da Medicina under the title Libello disputatorio. He also calls the entire collection of the quaestiones Brocarda, and each individual part of it a quaestio. But there he uses the term brocarda not in the technical sense of a literary genre of the generalia, but in the broader sense of a discussion pro and contra, of which he gives the following clarifying description: «Brocardica materia dicitur quae est contrariorum opinionum rationibus involuta».
Similar to that of Pillio and only slightly later, there is the collection owed to the glossator Ottone, furnished with solutions by Azone, and commonly known under the name of the latter, with the title Brocardica domini Azonis.
As regards the canonical field, if the genre of the brocarda is understood in the sense established by Pillio, it would seem appropriate to consider the Concordia discordantium canonum itself, Graziano (v.) in the middle of the twelfth century, as the extended realization of the genre of the b., in which the dicta Gratiani would constitute the solutiones of the contraria.
What is contained in the Opusculum de distinctionibus in canonum interpretatione adhibendis ad usum magistrorum, advocatorum et iudicum, compiled by Petrus Blesensis in France around 1180, would not instead constitute material for true b. (contrary to Van Hove’s opinion), since this work does not fully realize the genre of the brocardia in the sense described above. Kuttner excludes the possibility of speaking of true canonical b. for the period of the decretists. The first collections of canonical b. would have to be attributed to the decretalists. The text of two of them has come down to us. The first is represented by the Generalia of Richardus de Lacy (Anglicus), based on the compilatio Iᵃ and composed around 1198. These are followed by the Brocardia of Damasus, written between 1210 and 1215 on the first three compilationes of the decretals and revised by Bartolomaeus Brixiensis in 1234, with the addition of new textual citations, while the number of the 127 rules established by Damasus remained unchanged. The same work was subsequently revised after the Gregorian decretals.