publication immediately attracted, and almost monopolized, the
attention of the learned. Among the students and admirers of the
pandects was Gratian, a monk of Bologna, who conceived the idea of
compiling a digest of the canon law on the model of that favorite
work; and soon afterwards, having incorporated with his own labors the
collections of former writers, he gave his "decretum" to the public in
1151. From that moment the two codes, the civil and canon laws, were
deemed the principal repositories of legal knowledge; and the study of
each was supposed necessary to throw light on the other. Roger, the
bachelor, a monk of Bec, had already read lectures on the sister
sciences in England, but he was advanced to the government of his
abbey; and the English scholars, immediately after the publication of
the decretum, crowded to the more renowned professors in the city of
Bologna. After their return they practised in the episcopal courts;
their respective merits were easily appreciated, and the proficiency
of the more eminent was rewarded with an ample harvest of wealth and
preferment.

This circumstance gave to the spiritual a marked superiority over the
secular courts. The proceedings in the former were guided by fixed and
invariable principles, the result of the wisdom of ages; the latter
were compelled to follow a system of jurisprudence confused and
uncertain, partly of Anglo-Saxon, partly of Norman origin, and
depending on precedents, of which some were furnished by memory,
others had been transmitted by tradition. The clerical judges were men
of talents and education; the uniformity and equity of their decisions
were preferred to the caprice and violence which seemed to sway the
royal and baronial justiciaries; and by degrees every cause, which
legal ingenuity could connect with the provisions of the canons,
whether it regarded tithes, or advowsons, or public scandal, or