Giovanni d'Andrea was born at
Rifredo, near
Florence, and studied Roman law and
canon law at the
University of Bologna, the great law school of the age, where he distinguished himself in this subject so much that he was made professor at
Padua, and then at
Pisa before returning to Bologna, where he remained from the season of 1301–02 until his death, save for brief seasons at
Padua 1307–09 and 1319. He wrote the statutes by which the university was governed, in 1317. The 1911
Encyclopædia Britannica related curious stories of him: 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 (yet it is known that he remained a layman, was married and had children); 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 was also the father of
Bettina d'Andrea. He is reported to have died at Bologna of the
Black Death in 1348, and an epitaph in the church of the
Dominicans in which he was buried (calling him
Rabbi Doctorum, Lux, Censor, Normaque Morum) testifies to the public estimation of his character.
Johannes Calderinus (1300–1365) was his student and later his adoptive son.
Paulus de Liazariis and
Johannes de Sancto Georgio were among his students, and he counted the
humanists Cino da Pistoia and
Petrarch among his friends. ==Works==