Roger Vacarius was an Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 authority in civil

Civil law (common law)

Civil law, as opposed to criminal law, is the branch of law dealing with disputes between individuals or organizations, in which compensation may be awarded to the victim...

 and Canon law

Canon law (Catholic Church)

The canon law of the Catholic Church, is a fully developed legal system, with all the necessary elements: courts, lawyers, judges, a fully articulated legal code and principles of legal interpretation. It lacks the necessary binding force present in most modern day legal systems. The academic...

, who became the first known teacher of Roman law

Roman law

Roman law is the legal system of ancient Rome, and the legal developments which occurred before the 7th century AD — when the Roman–Byzantine state adopted Greek as the language of government. The development of Roman law comprises more than a thousand years of jurisprudence — from the Twelve...

 in England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

.

Apparently educated in Bologna

Bologna

Bologna is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna, in the Po Valley of Northern Italy. The city lies between the Po River and the Apennine Mountains, more specifically, between the Reno River and the Savena River. Bologna is a lively and cosmopolitan Italian college city, with spectacular history,...

, he was brought to Canterbury

Canterbury

Canterbury is a historic English cathedral city, which lies at the heart of the City of Canterbury, a district of Kent in South East England. It lies on the River Stour....

, possibly by Thomas Becket

Thomas Becket

Thomas Becket was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1162 until his murder in 1170. He is venerated as a saint and martyr by both the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion...

, to serve as counsel to the Archbishop of Canterbury

Archbishop of Canterbury

The Archbishop of Canterbury is the senior bishop and principal leader of the Church of England, the symbolic head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, and the diocesan bishop of the Diocese of Canterbury. In his role as head of the Anglican Communion, the archbishop leads the third largest group...

 Theobald of Bec

Theobald of Bec

Theobald was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1139 to 1161. He was a Norman; his exact birth date is unknown. Some time in the late 11th or early 12th century Theobald became a monk at the Abbey of Bec, rising to the position of abbot in 1137. King Stephen of England chose him to be Archbishop of...

, in his struggle with Henry of Blois

Henry of Blois

Henry of Blois , often known as Henry of Winchester, was Abbot of Glastonbury Abbey from 1126, and Bishop of Winchester from 1129 to his death.-Early life and education:...

, Bishop of Winchester

Bishop of Winchester

The Bishop of Winchester is the head of the Church of England diocese of Winchester, with his cathedra at Winchester Cathedral in Hampshire.The bishop is one of five Church of England bishops to be among the Lords Spiritual regardless of their length of service. His diocese is one of the oldest and...

. The case ended favorably for Theobald in 1146. Vacarius next surfaces in 1149 in Oxford University, where he taught to crowds of both rich and poor. For the latter, he prepared a nine-volume compendium of the Codex Justinianus

Corpus Juris Civilis

The Corpus Juris Civilis is the modern name for a collection of fundamental works in jurisprudence, issued from 529 to 534 by order of Justinian I, Eastern Roman Emperor...

. Said, if mastered, to resolve all of the legal questions commonly debated in the schools, it became a leading text-book in the emerging university. Often described as the Liber pauperum, the book gave rise to the nickname pauperistae for students of law in Oxford. Nearly complete manuscripts of this work survive in the cathedral libraries at Worcester

Worcester

The City of Worcester, commonly known as Worcester, , is a city and county town of Worcestershire in the West Midlands of England. Worcester is situated some southwest of Birmingham and north of Gloucester, and has an approximate population of 94,000 people. The River Severn runs through the...

 and Prague

Prague

Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...

 and in the town library at Bruges

Bruges

Bruges is the capital and largest city of the province of West Flanders in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is located in the northwest of the country....

. Fragments can be found in Oxford's Bodleian Library

Bodleian Library

The Bodleian Library , the main research library of the University of Oxford, is one of the oldest libraries in Europe, and in Britain is second in size only to the British Library...

 and in several of the college libraries there.

Despite its popularity, the new legal texts were not without opposition. King Stephen of England

Stephen of England

Stephen , often referred to as Stephen of Blois , was a grandson of William the Conqueror. He was King of England from 1135 to his death, and also the Count of Boulogne by right of his wife. Stephen's reign was marked by the Anarchy, a civil war with his cousin and rival, the Empress Matilda...

, brother of Henry of Blois, silenced Vacarius, and ordered the destruction of the books of civil and canon law that Theobald had brought over from Italy with Vacarius. This royal edict seems to have been abandoned, however, after Stephen's death in 1154, and evidence suggests that civil law was soon again a favorite subject at Oxford. By 1190 two students from Friesland

Friesland

Friesland is a province in the north of the Netherlands and part of the ancient region of Frisia.Until the end of 1996, the province bore Friesland as its official name. In 1997 this Dutch name lost its official status to the Frisian Fryslân...

 divided the evening between them to make a copy of the Liber pauperum.

It remains unknown whether Vacarius resumed his Oxford lectures after their interruption. In the same year that Stephen died, Vacarius's old friend Roger de Pont L'Evêque

Roger de Pont L'Evêque

Roger de Pont L'Évêque was a contemporary of Thomas Becket and later Archbishop of York. Born in Normandy, he preceded Becket as Archdeacon of Canterbury, and together with Becket served Theobald of Bec while Theobald was Archbishop of Canterbury...

 was promoted to the position of Archbishop of York

Archbishop of York

The Archbishop of York is a high-ranking cleric in the Church of England, second only to the Archbishop of Canterbury. He is the diocesan bishop of the Diocese of York and metropolitan of the Province of York, which covers the northern portion of England as well as the Isle of Man...

. Roger invited Stephen to join him in the north as legal adviser and ecclesiastical judge, and his name appears frequently in both papal letters and the chronicles of the period, indicating that he served in this capacity. For his services, he was rewarded with a prebend in the collegiate church of secular canons at Southwell

Southwell, Nottinghamshire

Southwell is a town in Nottinghamshire, England, best known as the site of Southwell Minster, the seat of the Church of England diocese that covers Nottinghamshire...

, half of which he was allowed, in 1191 to cede to his nephew Reginald. Vacarius is last heard of in 1198, when he and the prior of Thurgarton

Thurgarton

Thurgarton is a small village in rural Nottinghamshire. The village is close to Southwell, and Newark on Trent, with a medium length commuting distance to Nottingham. It is served by Thurgarton railway station...

 were commissioned by Pope Innocent III

Pope Innocent III

Pope Innocent III was Pope from 8 January 1198 until his death. His birth name was Lotario dei Conti di Segni, sometimes anglicised to Lothar of Segni....

 to fulfill a letter referring to crusades.

In addition to his legal work, surviving manuscripts attest to Vacarius' deliberations on other matters as well, likely in the latter half of his life. One of these, the Summa de assumpto homine, deals with the humanity of Christ, while the other, Summa de matrimonio, is a legal argument about the nature of marriage

Marriage

Marriage is a social union or legal contract between people that creates kinship. It is an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged in a variety of ways, depending on the culture or subculture in which it is found...

, in which he disputes both Gratian

Gratian

Gratian was Roman Emperor from 375 to 383.The eldest son of Valentinian I, during his youth Gratian accompanied his father on several campaigns along the Rhine and Danube frontiers. Upon the death of Valentinian in 375, Gratian's brother Valentinian II was declared emperor by his father's soldiers...

 and Peter Lombard

Peter Lombard

Peter Lombard was a scholastic theologian and bishop and author of Four Books of Sentences, which became the standard textbook of theology, for which he is also known as Magister Sententiarum-Biography:Peter Lombard was born in Lumellogno , in...

.

It is to Vacarius that we owe most of the information that has come down to us about Speroni, a heretic from Piacenza

Piacenza

Piacenza is a city and comune in the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Piacenza...

.

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