Description

Gratian was a 12th-century Benedictine monk and canon lawyer from Bologna. Little is known about him beyond the fact that he compiled and wrote this collection of legal texts, which became the code of canon law used in the Roman Catholic Church until 1918. This copy of the Decretum Gratiani, glossed with Bartholomaeus of Brescia’s version of the commentary by Johannes Teutonicus, was printed and illuminated in Italy in 1479. Besides receiving ornamented tempera initials, the book was illustrated with a framed dedication miniature that occupies two columns of ...