Reassessing the Influence of Medieval Jurisprudence on Jacques Cujas’ (1522-1590) Method

Jacques Cujas (1522-1590) emerged as a leading representative of legal humanism, an intellectual movement that introduced the ideas of evolution and change in the making of law and the functioning of institutions. Thanks to their knowledge of the ancient sources, humanist jurists replaced the Justinian’s compilations into the historical context. This approach represented one of the biggest divide with medieval methods. However, the Cujacian method is not the epitome of pure theoretical humanism, which would have completely casted out medieval jurisprudence. He used the writings of Glossators and Commentators according to his needs, without preconceived ideas. Thanks to these medieval foundations, Cujas built his own method, which was neither a simple improved resumption of the gloss and commentary nor a total repudiation, but a real intellectual change