Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Giovanni Andrea

ANDREA, Giovanni, the most famous Italian canonist of the 14th century, was born at Mugello, near Florence, about 1275. He studied canon law at Bologna, where he distinguished himself in this subject so much that he obtained a professorship of law, first at Padua, then at Pisa, and lastly at Bologna, rapidly acquiring a high reputation for his learning and his moral character. Little is positively known of his history, though many curious stories are told regarding him—e.g., that, by way of self-mortification, he lay every night for twenty years on the bare ground with only a bear's skin for a covering; that, in an audience he had with Pope Boniface VIII., his extraordinary shortness of stature led the Pope to believe he was kneeling, and to ask him three times to rise, to the immense merriment of the cardinals; and that he had a daughter, Novella, so accomplished in law as to be able to read her father's lectures in his absence, and so beautiful, that she had to read behind a curtain lest her face should distract the attention of the students. He is said to have died at Bologna of the plague in 1348, after having been a professor for forty-five years. He was buried in the church of the Dominicans, and the public estimation of his character is testified by his epitaph, in which he is styled Rabbi Doctorum, Lux, Censor, Normaque Morum. Andrea wrote the following works: Gloss on the Sixth Book of the Decretals; Glosses on the Clementines; Commentary on the Rules of Sextus. His additions to the Speculum of Durando are a mere adaptation from the Consilia of Oldradus, as is also the book De Sponsalibus et Matrimonio, from J. Anguisciola.