An attempt of another nature was commenced in Italy and the south of Gaul at the same period. The Roman society had not perished there so completely as in other quarters; in the cities there remained a somewhat greater degree of order and energy. Civilisation attempted to rear itself there again. For example, we find the municipal system recover breath, as it were, and exercise some influence upon the general course of events, in the kingdom of the Ostrogoths in Italy, under Theodoric, although both king and nation were barbarian. The Roman society had humanised the Goths, and to a certain extent assimilated them with itself. The same fact is perceptible in the south of Gaul. At the commencement of the sixth century, a Visigoth king of Toulouse, Alaric, caused the Roman laws to be collected, and published a code for his Roman subjects, under the name of the Brevarium Aniani.
It was the church which endeavoured to give a new beginning to civilisation in Spain. Instead of the old German assemblies of warriors (the malla), the council of Toledo held sway in Spain, and although influential laymen attended the council, the bishops governed it. In the laws of the Visigoths there is not a barbaric enactment; the compilation is evidently the work of the philosophers of the era, the clergy. They abound in general ideas and in theories which are completely foreign to barbarian manners. Thus it is known that the legislation of the barbarians was a personal legislation; that is to say, the same law applied only to men of the same race. The Roman law governed the Romans, the Franco law governed the Franks; each people had its own law, although they were united under the same government, and inhabited the same territory. This is the system which is called personal legislation, in opposition to the system of real legislation, founded upon territorial distinctions. Now the legislation of the Visigoths was not personal, but territorial. All the inhabitants of Spain, whether Romans or Visigoths, were subject to the same law. But there are still more evident traces of philosophy to be found. Amongst the barbarians, men were valued at a fixed rate, according to their situations; the barbarian, the Roman, the freeman, the vassal, &c. were not estimated at the same sum; their lives were made matter of tariff. The principle of men being of equal value in the eyes of the law, was established in the code of the Visigoths. With regard to the system of procedure, we find the oath of compurgatores and the judicial combat displaced for the proof by witnesses, and such a rational examination into facts as might be adopted in any civilised society. In a word, the whole Visigoth code bears a wise, systematic, and social character. We perceive in it the labours of that same clergy which held command in the councils of Toledo, and operated so powerfully on the government of the country.
Therefore in Spain, up to the great invasion of the Arabs, it was the theocratic principle which laboured to raise up civilisation.
In France, the same endeavour was the work of a different influence; it originated with great men, especially with Charlemagne. If we examine his reign in its various phases, we shall find that the prevailing idea of his mind was the civilisation of his people. First, with regard to his wars. He was constantly in the field, ranging from the south to the north-east, from the Ebro to the Elbe or the Weser. These were not mere arbitrary expeditions, arising from an insatiable thirst for conquests. I do not assert that all he did may be systematically accounted for, or that his plans display a profound diplomatic or strategetic wit, but he obeyed the impulse of a great necessity resulting from his scheme to repress barbarism. During the whole period of his reign, he was employed in arresting the double invasion of the Mussulmans on the south, of the Germans and Slavi on the north, in prosecution of that object. This is the character of the military part of the reign of Charlemagne: as I have previously said, this was also the end and purpose of his expeditions against the Saxons.
Passing from his wars to his internal government, we find the same principle in activity, the attempt to introduce order and uniformity into the administration of all the countries which he possessed. I cannot call them a kingdom or a state, for these expressions are of too regular a stamp, and raise ideas too little in accordance with the society over which Charlemagne presided. This much, however, is certain, that he, master of an immense territory, was indignant at beholding all things therein in a most dissevered, anarchical, and brutish condition, and devoted his energies to soften its hideousness. His first measure was to despatch his missi dominici into the different districts of his possessions, to inquire into facts, and either reform them, or report them to him. He afterwards held general assemblies with much more regularity than his predecessors, which he compelled almost all the influential men of his territories to attend. These were not free assemblies; nor were they summoned for what we would call deliberation. They were used by Charlemagne as a means of getting information as to facts, and of introducing some regularity and union among his disorganised subjects.
In whatever point of view the reign of Charlemagne is considered, the same character is found predominant, a contest against the barbaric state, the genius of civilisation at work. This is the spirit which is evinced in his eagerness to institute schools, in his taste for learned men, in his predilection for ecclesiastical influence, and in his adoption of everything which appeared to him capable of acting beneficially either on society as a whole, or on man as an individual.
An attempt of the same nature was made by King Alfred in England somewhat later.
Thus the different causes which I have particularised, as tending to put an end to barbarism, were in action, in some quarter or other of Europe, from the fifth to the ninth century.