By this law we decree that those who serve in the individual schools, and who, after completing the curricula of their duties, shall have reached the rank of chiefs and through the adored purple of our divinity have won the dignity of most illustrious Counts, shall enjoy both the girdle and all the privileges open to them, and hereafter to their life’s end shall be subject to the court of Your Highness only, nor shall they be compelled by the command of any one else whomsoever to undergo civil litigation.

Yet in criminal suits and in matters connected with public tribute we wish the appropriate jurisdiction of the rulers of the provinces to be recognized against even such men, lest, under the pretext of a granted privilege, either the influence of the wicked be increased or the public good be diminished.[29]

     THE EMPEROR CONSTANTINE, AUGUSTUS, TO THE PEOPLE.

We direct that physicians, and chiefly imperial physicians, and ex-imperial physicians, grammarians and other professors of letters, together with their wives and sons, and whatever property they possess in their own cities, be immune from all payment of taxes and from all civil or public duties, and that in the provinces they shall not have strangers quartered on them, or perform any official duties, or be brought into court, or be subject to legal process, or suffer injustice; and if any one harass them he shall be punished at the discretion of the Judge.  We also command that their salaries and fees be paid, so that they may more readily instruct many in liberal studies and the above mentioned Arts.

     Proclaimed on the fifth day before the Kalends of October (Sept.
     27) at Constantinople, in the Consulship of Dalmatius and
     Zenophilas.[30]

(c) Canon Law

About 1142 (the year of Abelard’s death) Gratian, a monk of Bologna, doubtless influenced by the school of Roman Law in that city, made a compilation of the Canon Law, which included the canons or rules governing the Church in its manifold activities,—­“its relations with the secular power, its own internal administration, or the conduct of its members.”  Hitherto Canon Law had been regarded as merely a subdivision of Theology, just as Roman Law had been considered a branch of Rhetoric.  It now became an independent subject,—­further addition to the body of higher studies.  As an influence upon the development of universities it was not less important than the Corpus Juris Civilis.

The compilation made by Gratian was added to in later generations, and the whole body of church law was known in the fifteenth century as the Corpus Juris Canonici (Body of Canon Law).  Its main divisions are: