Pillio da Medicina

PILLIO da MEDICINA. - Glossator, civilist, b. in the first half of the 12th century, disciple of Oderico, continuator and, for some, pupil of Piacentino. There is notice of him in 1169; held to be a master at Bologna from that year until 1182 and at Modena from 1182 to 1198, he is last remembered in 1207 at a trial in Bologna on behalf of his native town. Cited as Pillius, Pilius, Pileus, Pylius, Pyleus and with the abbreviations Pi., Py. Having died ca. the beginning of the 13th century, with his disappearance the Studium of Modena declined.

Author of many glosses, he is the first to collect his own Quaestiones, where each case seems to refer to a dispute actually held (on Saturday, whence quaestiones sabbatinae). He is also the first author of a brocuria with the Libellus disputationum; the first expositor of those Libri feudorum which he adds to the Authenticae; author of a rare work of procedure, the Summa de ordinis iudiciorum, in which Bulgaro, Martino, Piacentino, Giovanni Bassiano are cited, and also the Decretum and the Decretales; third, after Rogerio and Piacentino, as author of a Summa that should in fact complete that of Piacentino but remains incomplete and, later stuffed with others' additions, circulates like the other often 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 an astounding frequency and knowledge; less expert perhaps in Canon law, he renders as Civil law questions originally proper to the latter, except for the solutio; remembered by Tancredi as legum doctor egregius, for Odofredo fuit valde bonus... et habuit hic magnum honorem.

Fulvio Crosara