The authority file of the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek suggests that B. is really ‘Uzzo, Bartolomeo da’ and that he operated at the beginning of the 14th century. That B. is, in fact, ‘Bartolomeo da Uzzo’ can be traced back, and no further so far as we can tell, to a footnote in Besta, p. 1.2.873 n.1: ‘Italiano e della seconda meta del secolo decimoquarto parrebbe Bartolomeo de Hucio (da Uzzo), cui dobbiamo un buon trattato sulle sostituzioni edito in TUI, VIII.’ That ‘Hucio’ is Uzzo (the name of a region, prov. Pistoia, found in the name of the modern town Croce a Uzzo) is plausible without being required. (The name is not in the 1972 Graesse.) That the author of the tract was named ‘Bartolomeo’ and not ‘Bartolo’ we have not found mentioned before 1925. That Besta had extensive bibliographical knowledge goes without saying. This reference, however, has all the hallmarks of his having converted a note that read ‘Bart. de Hucio’ into ‘Bartolomeo de Hucio’ without going back to look at the source.

A further seeming error is older. The humanist Jakob Spiegel’s ‘Nomenclatura jurisperitorum’, a work that can be dated to 1540 with some confidence, and which appears in the second and subsequent editions of his Juris civilis lexicon lists a ‘Bartolus de Hugutio, Gallus’ and says nothing more about him. (Rivier, p. 236.) That Spiegel was trying to make sense of ‘Hucio’ and turned it into one of the Latin forms of the Italian name ‘Uguccio’ seems clear. Why Spiegel thought that B. was French we do not know. He wrote before the first printings of both of B’s works mentioned in WorldCat: Tractatus 1549, fol. 7.161r and 7.181r. There is, however, a reference in the printed catalogue of the Biblioteca Colombina (p. 1.201) to an edition of both works by Denis de Harsay of Lyon in 1535. Spiegel may have seen this printing or a reference to it, and simply assumed that the author was French because of the printing in Lyon. That B. was French, at least in origin, seems unlikely. Bartole is not a common French name; Bartolo is more common in Italy. ‘Hucio’ is not common in either place, unless it is Uzzo, as Besta thought, in which case it is definitely Italian, as is, of course, Uguccio. Modern scholarship has rejected the French identification, although that rejection is based on the assumption that B’s name was, in fact, Bartolomeo da Uzzo. (Arabeyre, p. 11.)

The 19th-century editor of Spiegel’s ‘Nomenclatura’ adds: ‘Ziletti le nomme Bartolus de Hucio (Huc? [a quite rare French surname]). Luí-même se qualifie ingenuus canonum doctor et professeur de droit canon, mais ne dit pas où. Deux opuscules de lui sont insérés au tome VIII du Tractatus Tractatuum. Le plus petit, De quartis, est fait essentiellement d’après Jacques de Révigny et Jean de Lignano. Dans l’autre, De Substitutionibus, qu’il déclare franchement tiré des ancíens, il cìte Jacques de Révigny, Jacques d’Arena, Guill. du Cuing, Richard Malumbra, Cynus, Raynier, Bartole, et, en fait de juristes moins connus, Jean Roland et Raymond de Sabaria.’ (Rivier, p. 236.) This is substantially correct, and allows us to correct an error found quite frequently, that B. is to be dated to the beginning of the 14th century. He could not be citing Bartolus de Saxoferrato and Rainerius de Forlivio if he were.

Finding a possible terminus ante quem is more difficult. The fact that B. does not mention Baldus, who wrote a quite well-known Apparatus substitutionum (TUI 1584, t. 8.1, fol. 201rb), suggests that B. did not operate as late as the 15th century. If we could find the ‘juristes moins connus’, ‘Jo. Rolandi’ and ‘Ray. de Sabaria’, who appear in B’s work in conjunction with Bartolus (TUI 1584, t. 8.1, fol. 212v), that might help, but so far, they have proved to be as obscure as B. B. does not seem to have been well known in his own time. He does not appear in Romano’s extensive list of authors on substitutions who were cited by 14th century jurists, and Romano himself cites him only for his list of other authors. (Romano, p. 14 n. 14.)

B’s De substitutionibus deserves some attention. Its structure owes much to the treatise of Rainerius de Forlivio that Romano edited, but it is an independent work. It begins, as we might expect from a canonist, with a citation of a decretal, but proceeds relying, so far as we can yet tell, exclusively on civilian texts and writers. His contribution, at a minimum, was to integrate what Bartolus had said on the topic with what Rainerius had said, and it may be more original than that. B. wrote the work, he tells us, ‘pro aliquali instructione canonistarum’.

Work with manuscripts, which we have not undertaken, might tell us more. None of the treatises De substitutionibus in Dolezalek’s ‘Manuscripta juridica’ seems to be this work. It is possible, however, that one or more of the three imperfectly described manuscripts of such a work that manuscript cataloguers have attributed to Bartolus de Saxoferrato are this work, and it is definitely possible that there are manuscripts yet to be discovered. We end for the time being, however, in some agreement with Besta. A man who tells us he was a teacher of canon law, whose name in Latin was printed in the 16th century as ‘Bartolus de Hucio’, wrote ‘un buon trattato sulle sostituzioni’, probably ‘nella seconda meta del secolo decimoquarto’.

Source: CERL Thesaurus.

Entry by: CD/DC v.2017

TUI database