PILLIO da MEDICINA. — Glossator and civil lawyer, born in the first half of the 12th century, a disciple of Oderico, and continuator and, according to some, pupil of Piacentino. We have information about him in 1169; regarded as a master at Bologna from that year until 1182 and at Modena from 1182 to 1198, he is mentioned for the last time in 1207 in a trial at Bologna concerning his native country. He is cited as Pillius, Pilius, Pileus, Pylius, Pyleus, and by the abbreviations Pi. and Py. He died around the beginning of the 13th century, and with his disappearance the Studium of Modena declined.
Author of many glosses, he was the first to collect his own Quaestiones, in which each case seems to refer to a dispute that had actually been held (on Saturday, hence quaestiones sabbatinae). He was also the first author of brocuria, with the Libellus disputationum; the first expositor of those Libri feudorum that he added to the Authenticæ; author of a rare work on procedure, the Summa de ordinis indiciorum, in which Bulgaro, Martino, Piacentino, Giovanni Bassiano, as well as the Decretum and the Decretales, are cited; third, after Rogerio and Piacentino, as the author of a Summa that was intended precisely to complete Piacentino’s but remained unfinished and, subsequently filled with additions by others, often passed, like the other, under the name of Azone; finally, he wrote distinctiones, a treatise de testibus, and various consilia.
He cites the Corpus Iuris Civilis in all its parts with astonishing frequency and knowledge; perhaps less expert in canon law, he renders in terms of civil law questions originally belonging to the latter, except as regards the solutio; remembered by Tancredi as legum doctor egregius, according to Odofredo fuit valde bonus... et habuit hic magnum honorem.