A Legist, from the Latin ''lex'' 'law', is any expert or student of law. It was especially used since the Carolingian dynasty for royal councillors who advised the monarch in legal matters, and specifically helped base its absolutist ambitions on

Roman Law Roman law is the legal system of ancient Rome, including the legal developments spanning over a thousand years of jurisprudence, from the Twelve Tables (c. 449 BC), to the '' Corpus Juris Civilis'' (AD 529) ordered by Eastern Roman emperor Ju ...

. More generally they were teachers of civil or Roman law, who, besides expounding sources, explaining terms, elucidating texts, summarizing the contents of chapters etc., illustrated by cases, real or imaginary, the numerous questions and distinctions arising out of the "Corpus Juris" enactments of the ancient Roman code. From the twelfth century, when a fresh impulse was given to legal researches, the terms legist and

decretist In the history of canon law, a decretist was a student and interpreter of the ''Decretum Gratiani''. Like Gratian, the decretists sought to provide "a harmony of discordant canons" (''concordia discordantium canonum''), and they worked towards this ...

—the latter applied, in the narrower sense, to the interpreter of ecclesiastical

canon law Canon law (from grc, κανών, , a 'straight measuring rod, ruler') is a set of ordinances and regulations made by ecclesiastical authority (church leadership) for the government of a Christian organization or church and its members. It is th ...

and commentator on the canonical texts—have been carefully distinguished. Legists came to be employed by lower authorities in the feudal pyramid. The rise of universities would lead to academical lawyers taking their place in the western world. By analogy, the term is also applied to equivalent legal advisers in other traditions, e.g. in

Islamic law Sharia (; ar, شريعة, sharīʿa ) is a body of religious law that forms a part of the Islamic tradition. It is derived from the religious precepts of Islam and is based on the sacred scriptures of Islam, particularly the Quran and the ...

and/or civil law of the

Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire, * ; is an archaic version. The definite article forms and were synonymous * and el, Оθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία, Othōmanikē Avtokratoria, label=none * info page on book at Martin Luther University) ...

Sources

* *''Nouveau petit Larousse illustré'', 1952 (in French) {{Authority control Legal history Lawyers by type Canon law history