Lawyers and Church in Renaissance 145
the curious inscription, “Here lies Jason del Maino, whoever
he was” [quisquis Ule fuit]. This epitaph is still to be seen in
the church of St. Anthony in Pavia. Another and much more
elaborate epitaph was circulated and is recorded in contem-
porary eulogies of Jason, but so far as I know it was never
inscribed on a monument. This epitaph in Latin verses con-
sists in a curious dialogue of which I give the following free
translation: “Who lies in this tomb?” “Who?” “The great
Jason.” “Do you mean he who was enriched by the golden
fleece?” “One far more famous than that Jason.” ‘Who then,
I beg of you?” “Jason del Maino, the great glory of the Im-
perial law. There was no one more learned in the law than
he, nor anyone who could better restore the dead law of the
ancients.”
In his attitude towards the ecclesiastical establishment and
towards the doctrines of the church Jason appears to have
been a comfortable conformist. There was even published at
one time a rumor that he aspired to be named a Cardinal by
the Borgia pope. His lectures opened with the appropriate in-
vocations and in his writings and in his will we find the
formulas of the conventional religious appeals. Furthermore
he participated fully in such contemporary observances as
pilgrimages and tire glorification of relics. On one occasion
he asked the Venetian government to grant him a safe con-
duct in order that he might make a visit to the bones of St.
Anthony at Padua.
With all this there are nevertheless indications that Jason’s
interests were only conventionally directed towards the ob-
servances of religious beliefs. Certainly in the period of the
intense struggle between Louis XII and Juhus II at the time
of the Council of Pisa in 1511 Jason preserved a neutrality
which made it possible for him to continue his career without