Johannes Franciscus De Pavinis : un giurista ed editore nel Quattrocento

Johannes Franciscus de Pavinis has here been regarded as a jurist capable of combining a traditional education as theologian and doctor in utroque iure with the precocious tendency to perceive the changing demands of a medieval world already in crisis. At the beginning of modern age, when the introduction of the press allowed a first glimpse of the differences between two cultural universes and also two forms of textual transmissions, Pavini deeply understood the revolutionary importance of this instrument in the spreading of the juridical culture and for this reason he became a sensitive and passionate promoter of the genesis of the printed juridical text. He devoted all his erudition to tracing manuscripts containing the most varied texts on canon law on which he then intervened proposing the creation of original collections addressed to the large number of readers that the press invention consented to reach. His commitment in reorganizing the decretales extravagantes, in the collection of the decisiones Rotae romanae, and in defining a set of glossae to the juridical collections, indeed leads us to think of a particularly modern vision of the legal system. In fact, Pavini took into consideration the tradition of all Papal decretals, the study of law, the doctrine of consilia and the administration of the Church in the fourteenth century and then based the choice of his sources on his personal experience as Professor of Theology and Canon Law, as Auditor in the Sacra Romana Rota and relator during the processes of canonization, and also as Rota s Treasurer and bishop s deputy. Following Pavini s leading experience inside universities, law courts and ecclesiastical hyerarchies and bureaucratic system, the present work has therefore tried to take a closer look at the results of Pavini's connection with the respective institutions.