Antonio Agustín y Albanell

Antonio Agustín y Albanell (1517 to 1586) was a Spanish humanist, jurist, theologian and Roman Catholic prelate, remembered above all as the first historian of canon law. Born in Zaragoza, he studied law and classical literature at Alcalá, Salamanca, Padua and Bologna, where Andrea Alciati was among his teachers, and took his doctorate in both laws in 1541. In 1544 he became an auditor of the Sacra Rota Romana, began an ecclesiastical career that took him to a papal nunciature, and was later bishop of Alife, bishop of Lleida and, from 1576, archbishop of Tarragona, after attending the Council of Trent. His Emendationum et opinionum libri IV argued that the Littera Florentina was the source of all other copies of the Pandects, which weakened the authority of the medieval vulgate text of Roman law. He also wrote on the sources of canon law, including a textual criticism of the Decretum Gratiani. He assembled a large library of Greek and Latin manuscripts and founded printing presses in Lleida and Tarragona.