GRATIAN. - Italian canonist and theologian, whose name appears with no addition, neither patronymic nor adjective. Sometimes, in dictionaries or in commentaries on the Divine Comedy, where Dante mentions G., he is called Francesco G.; but Francesco is an entirely arbitrary addition and an error derived from who knows where; the same must be said of the name Giovanni. Evidently G. is a Roman name. Although it does not emerge with precision, the place of his birth must, in accordance with tradition, be located in Tuscany; its attribution is disputed between Ficulle or Carraria, near Orvieto, and Chiusi, in the Sienese territory, with the latter asserted more insistently. Certainly G.'s activity does not seem to go outside or beyond Tuscany, his homeland, Emilia and Romagna, particularly Bologna, where he resided in the monastery of Sts. Nabor and Felix, composed his Decretum (v. CORPUS IURIS CANONICI, II) and taught, for the first time, in the oldest university, the center of European legal culture, canon law, of whose science he is considered the founder. He marks the beginning of the formation of this scientific discipline and of the first teaching open to all, including laymen.
The date of his birth, like that of his death, is unknown; one can only say that he composed the Decretum between 1140 and 1150. Indeed the Bolognese tradition, inscribed on the marble of an epigraph in his memory in the basilica of St. Petronius in Bologna, indicates 1151 as the date of the Decretum's composition.
It seems by now established that he was a religious (although there is some historian who calls him a layman or a non-priest religious) and a member of the Camaldolese Order. Some think that he was instead a Cluniac, since it cannot be known with certainty whether in his time the monastery of Sts. Nabor and Felix of Bologna was truly Camaldolese. It is not known what studies he undertook or where; someone says in the monastery of Classe; but others maintain that the chroniclers confuse the word Classe with Chiusi. Certainly he taught at Bologna. There is no trace of public offices held by him, nor of his activities in the political field; his appointment as bishop appears to be a report without foundation. Accordingly the biographical notes concerning him are a fabric of legends, which happens moreover also for other personalities of these medieval centuries.
When the Decretum appeared there was no sense that it was the work of a great jurist, lucerna iuris; however the book, or rather the books, had an immense fortune, in the schools and in the courts of the Christian countries of Europe; but also a varied one through the centuries; Luther threw it into the flames, which did not prevent even his followers from studying the text. At times exalted and at times despised, the Decretum is today considered at its true value. There is a readiness to recognize that in it is found the effort of a synthesis, of a powerful unification, better the work of several men than of one man alone; its errors are common to the culture of the time. But one cannot fail to start from G.'s work to trace the lines of every legal institution that passed from the Middle Ages to the modern age.
Dante places G. in Paradise and says: «Quell'altro fiammeggiare esce dal riso - di Grazian, che l'uno e l'altro foro - aiutò sì che piace in Paradiso» (X, 103-105).