GRAZIANO. — Italian canonist and theologian, whose name bears no addition, either patronymic or adjectival. Sometimes, in dictionaries or commentaries on the Divine Comedy, where Dante recalls G., he is called Francesco G.; but Francesco is a wholly arbitrary addition, and it is not known from where the error derived; the same must be said of the name Giovanni. Evidently G. is a Roman name. Although it cannot be established with precision, the place of his birth must, in accordance with tradition, be located in Tuscany; F. culle or Carraria, near Orvieto, and Chiusi, in the Sienese territory, dispute the distinction, the latter with greater insistence. Certainly G.’s activity does not seem to have extended beyond Tuscany, his homeland, Emilia, and Romagna, particularly Bologna, where he resided in the monastery of SS. Nabore and Felice, composed his Decretum (v. II), and taught canon law, for the first time, at the oldest university, the center of European juridical culture; he is regarded as the founder of the science of canon law. His work marks the beginning of the formation of this scientific discipline and of the first teaching open to everyone, including the laity.
The date of his birth, like that of his death, is unknown; it can only be said that he composed the Decretum between 1140 and 1150. Indeed, the Bolognese tradition, recorded on the marble of an inscription commemorating him in the basilica of S. Petronio in Bologna, gives 1151 as the date of the composition of the Decretum.
It now seems established that he was a religious (although there is some historian who calls him a layman or a religious who was not a priest) and a member of the Camaldolese Order. Some think instead that he was a Cluniac, since it is impossible to know with certainty whether, in his time, the monastery of SS. Nabore and Felice in Bologna was truly Camaldolese. It is not known what studies he pursued or where; some say at the monastery of Classe; but others maintain that the chroniclers confused the word Classe with Chiusi. He certainly taught in Bologna. There is no trace of public offices held by him, nor of any activity on his part in the political sphere; his appointment as bishop seems to be an unfounded report. Consequently, the biographical notes concerning him are a tissue of legends, as is also the case with 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; nevertheless, the book, or rather the books, enjoyed immense success in the schools and courts of the Christian countries of Europe, though this success varied over the centuries; Luther cast it into the flames, which did not even prevent his followers from studying the text. Alternately exalted and despised, the
Decretum is today considered at its proper worth. There is a willingness to recognize in it the effort toward a synthesis, a powerful unification, more the work of several men than of a single man; its errors are common to the culture of the time. But one cannot fail to begin with G.’s work in tracing the lines of every juridical institution that passed from the Middle Ages into the modern age.
Dante places G. in Paradise and says: “That other flame issues from the smile—of Grazian, who helped both tribunals—so that it pleases in Paradise” (X, 103-105).