DECRETISTS. – The dissemination of the Decretum Gratiani (v. CORPUS IURIS CANONICI), which rapidly entered practical use and was widely employed as a textbook in the universities, gave rise to a flourishing school of scholars and commentators. By carrying out on the Decretum work analogous to that which the Bolognese glossators had undertaken on Roman law, they enriched canonistic literature with summae and commentaries on Gratian’s text. The designation decretistae therefore came to be applied, in a narrower sense, to these interpreters, who were for the most part ecclesiastics. Moreover, the expression is still commonly used to distinguish, in the history of canonical literature, that period of approximately a century extending from 1140 to 1234, that is, until the publication of the Decretals of Gregory IX, decretalists (v.) instead prevailed. It should be noted, however, that the two terms decretists and decretalists should not be regarded as opposed to one another, since the latter did not cease glossing the Decretum, nor did they constitute a school distinct from that of the decretists; moreover, the distinction between decretists and decretalists is untenable in the case of canonists who wrote both on Gratian’s Decree and on the Decretals.
The initiator of the exegesis of the Decree was Paucapalea, a disciple of Gratian himself and also the author of certain interpolations in his master’s text, called, perhaps precisely after his name, paleae. Other glossators were Alberto (later Pope Gregory VIII), Rufino, Giovanni da Faenza, Stefano di Tournay, Giovanni Semeca Teutonico, author of the ordinary gloss on the Decree, and its reviser Bartolomeo di Brescia. Authors of summae were, in addition to some of the glossators themselves, Rolando Bandinelli (later Pope Alexander III), Simone da Bisignano, Giovanni
Bassiano, Ognibene, and, among the most notable, Uguccione da Pisa. Once the period of the decretalists had begun, the Decree nevertheless continued to be taught in the universities and studied by scholars; mention must therefore also be made of the Breviarium Decretorum by the Portuguese Giovanni di Dio and of the works of Princivalle and Guido di Baisio.