Gregory Thaumaturgus
Beirut was first mentioned in writing as a major center for the study of law in the 239 works of Gregory Thaumaturgus, the bishop of Neo-Caesarea. Other early written sources do not mention when the law school was established, and the date is much debated among modern historians and scholars. Edward Gibbon suggested its founding may have been directed by locally born Emperor Alexander Severus, who reigned during AD 222–235; this hypothesis had been supported by Gilles Ménage, a late 17th-century French scholar. Italian jurist Scipione Gentili, however, attributed the school's foundation to Augustus, while 19th-century German theologian Karl Hase advocated its establishment shortly after the victory at Actium (31 BC). Adolf Friedrich Rudorff dated it to the reign of Hadrian, while Franz Peter Bremer suggested that it opened around 200, based on Thaumaturgus.