ODOFREDO DENARI. – Jurist, one of the last glossators, born in Bologna of a noble and wealthy family in the first decade of the 13th century, on 3 Dec. 1265.
A pupil of Iacopo Baldovini, O. was professor at the Bolognese Studium for about thirty years. The wide experience in judicial and political matters, which he acquired not only through the practice of advocacy but also through long sojourns in France and in many places in Italy, justified the important assignments entrusted to him by his own Commune and by others.
Learned, but by no means original, and written in a careless and prolix style, his Lecturae on the Digest and on Justinian’s Code nonetheless possess two great merits: they are the only ones, among the lectures of the glossators, to survive in their original or nearly original form, and they are enriched with interesting, albeit not always reliable, information about the customs of the time and the historical events of the Bolognese school. Several minor works by O. also remain, chiefly monographs, the precise catalogue of which is difficult to establish owing to the uncertainty of various attributions.