First, I shall give you summaries of each title [i.e., each chapter into which the books are divided] before I proceed to the text; second, I shall give you as clear and explicit a statement as I can of the purport of each Law (included in the title); thirdly, I shall read the text with a view to correcting it; fourthly, I shall briefly repeat the contents of the Law; fifthly, I shall solve apparent contradictions, adding any general principles of Law (to be extracted from the passage), commonly called “Brocardica,” and any distinctions or subtle and useful problems (quaestiones) arising out of the Law, with their solutions, as far as the Divine Providence shall enable me.  And if any Law shall seem deserving, by reason of its celebrity or difficulty, of a Repetition, I shall reserve it for an evening Repetition.[58]

The varied statement and restatement of the passage, implied in the foregoing description, was doubtless necessary to make it intelligible to the not-too-keen minds of the auditors.  As Rashdall points out, it “makes no mention of a very important feature of all mediaeval lectures,—­the reading of the ‘glosses.’” This is mentioned in the Bologna statutes now to be cited.

There are numerous statutes on the mode of lecturing.  At Bologna, and doubtless elsewhere, professors seem to have experienced the difficulty, not unknown to modern teachers, of getting through the entire course within the prescribed time.  The students, who regulated the conduct of their teachers, made stringent rules to prevent this, and punished violations of them by fines large enough to make professors take due caution: 

We have decreed also that all Doctors actually lecturing must read the glosses immediately after reading the chapter or the law, unless the continuity of the chapters or of the laws requires otherwise, taking the burden in this matter on their own consciences in accordance with the oath they have taken.  Nor, with regard to those things that are not to be read, must they yield to the clamor of the scholars.  Furthermore we decree that Doctors, lecturing ordinarily or extraordinarily, must come to the sections assigned de novo, according to the regulations below.  And we decree, as to the close observance by them of the passages, that any Doctor, in his ordinary lecturing in Canon or Civil Law, must deposit, fifteen days before the Feast of Saint Michael, twenty-five Bologna pounds with one of the treasurers whom the rectors have appointed; which treasurer shall promise to give said money to the rectors, or the general beadle in their name, all at once or in separate amounts, as he shall be required by them or by him.

The form, moreover, to be observed by the Doctors as to the sections is this:  Let the division of the book into sections (puncta) be determined, and then let him be notified. [And if any Doctor fails to reach any section on the specified