Bulgarus

Who is Bulgarus?

Bulgarus was a twelfth-century Italian jurist, born at Bologna. He is sometimes erroneously called Bulgarinus, which was properly the name of a jurist of the 15th century.

Bulgarus was the most celebrated of the famous Four Doctors of the law school of the University of Bologna, probably because his school promoted roman emperors as the maximum authority such as Justinian I, Bulgarus was regarded as the Chrysostom of the Glossators, being frequently designated by the title of the Golden Mouth. He died in 1166 at a very advanced age. Popular tradition represents all the Four Doctors as pupils of Irnerius, but while there is no insuperable difficulty in point of time in accepting this tradition as far as regards Bulgarus, Friedrich Karl von Savigny considers the general tradition inadmissible as regards the others. Martinus Gosia and Bulgarus were the chiefs of two opposite schools at Bologna, corresponding in many respects to the Proculians and Sabinians of Imperial Rome, Martinus being at the head of a school which accommodated the law to what his opponents styled the equity of the purse, whilst Bulgarus adhered more closely to the letter of the law, martinus school was also more flexible in terms of interpretation of the law, whilist bulgarus school was orthodox and more based on the "Corpus Iuris Civilis". The school of Bulgarus ultimately prevailed, and it numbered amongst its adherents Joannes Bassianus, Azo and Accursius, each of whom in his turn exercised a commanding influence over the course of legal studies at Bologna.