GIOVANNI D'ANDREA. — Italian lay canonist, born around 1270 at Rifredo in the Mugello, died at Bologna on 7 July 1348. His father Andrea and mother Novella were not married to one another. Before the age of ten he had already begun studying the Decretals. His teachers in Roman law were Martino Sillimano and Riccardo Malombra, and in canon law Egidio and the archdeacon Guido da Baisio. The latter, as he himself says, conferred his doctorate upon him by employing “good deceit,” inasmuch as he had declared to him that he would come to enjoy legal studies once his childhood had passed (Novella in sextum, proemium). He taught at Bologna, where he lectured on the Decree (1303), then at Padua (1307), and thereafter again at Bologna (1309), where he remained until the end of his life.
The commune of Bologna entrusted him with many public offices. He was a friend of Petrarch, Calderini, and Ugo, king of Cyprus and Jerusalem.
While still alive, he was able to enjoy a well-deserved reputation. His writings were highly sought after, and their considerable historical erudition still makes them particularly valuable today for the information they contain in this regard. Especially noteworthy from this standpoint are the Additiones that he made to Durante’s Speculum and completed toward the end of his life (1346); with abundant direct information drawn from manuscripts and reasoned historical criticism, they indicate the sources of legal literature, for the most part Italian, from which the French procedural jurist drew extensively and sometimes literally.
Nevertheless, from what Baldo degli Ubaldi indicates in his subsequent Additiones to the Speculum (l. 40, tit. de concessione praebendae), even G. d'A. was unable to escape the period’s habit of occasionally appropriating the writings of others, especially those of Oldrado; and Baldo states in that passage, with particular reference to Oldrado’s writings, «insignis fur aliorum laborum Ioh. Andrese fuerit».
The historical information offered by G. d'A., however, is the original fruit of his pronounced critical tendency, which makes him the father of historical literature in both canon and civil law. His writings were also rendered extremely valuable by his particular versatility in legal interpretation. His contemporaries called him fons et tuba iuris.
With G. d'A. the so-called classical period of canon law comes to an end. He may also be regarded as the summarizer of earlier canonical juridical thought, because of his extensive references to the best doctrines of others and his often successful attempt to provide a general overview of canonical juridical science, organized by subject matter, up to his own time. Where he expresses his own thesis, he supports it with powerful intelligence and great diligence.
His output consists chiefly of commentaries on the various collections of the Decretals.
He composed his first commentary on Boniface VIII’s Liber Sextus; it was a youthful work that he himself corrected through subsequent additions, and the definitive version appears to have been completed before the death of Boniface VIII (1303). This commentary came to serve as the ordinary gloss on the Liber Sextus, being preferred to the other commentaries written in the text itself.
Second in chronological order are his Commentaria novella on the Decretals of Gregory IX, compiled no earlier than 1338: an important work in which he reports many opinions of doctors and proposes his own resolutions with refined ingenuity. On the same Gregorian Decretales he also composed his Casus breves. He subsequently wrote his Lectura in librum sextum decretalium, a work that he did not complete before 1339. He is likewise responsible for the first Glossa in Clementinas. Also noteworthy are his Quaestiones Mercuriales, although genuine originality is not always discernible in them. On the other hand, his writings include works devoted to particular subjects, such as his Lectura super arboribus consanguinitatis et adimitatis, which enjoyed wide success in the Middle Ages, and the Summa de sponsalibus et matrimonio, a recasting, with additions, of the work of Giovanni di Cesena or Anguissola.
He is also credited with Tractatus varii: De interdicto, De consuetudine (referred to in the Commentaria novella), and a Tractatus de renuntiatione beneficiorum.