142 The Rice Institute Pamphlet
cease any further education in classical Latin and put him
to the study of the law, which would be of the greatest value
to him in his future high situation. Decio had among his
pupils at the University of Pisa Cesare Borgia, Francesco
Guicciardini, and Giovanni di Medici, the future Pope Leo X.
Even rulers and governments deigned to take a particular
interest in the harangues and lectures of the jurists. Lorenzo
de Medici himself, accompanied by his friend, Poliziano,
came to the Universiy of Pisa to hear a debate between the
Milanese lawyer Giasone del Maino and the Sienese profes-
sor BartoIommeo Sozzmi. This debate created an intense in-
terest among the audience and so keen was the competition
between these two eminent scholars that each of them was
afterwards accused of having forged texts of the Digest in
order to win his case. The very fact that the charge could be
made indicates how much stock was put in the victory in
such a contest. At a later date in the period when the French
were occupying the Duchy of Milan, King Louis XII came to
the University of Pavia to hear Del Maino expound a text of
the Digest. These incidents are sufficient to indicate the high
esteem in which the legal profession was held and the degree
of influence that could be exerted by the most eminent pro-
fessors of civil law. It is hardly possible that these men who
taught thousands of students, many of whom were not bound
for conventional legal careers, should not have influenced
their students’ thinking even on subjects which were not
directly related to the texts of the Roman law. One of the
most interesting questions to consider is their relationship
to the church and the ideas that they may have imparted to
their pupils about the ecclesiastical establishment.
In discussing the attitude of the men of the law towards
the Church I will select examples from the period roughly