The Visigothic code

by Unknown

TO

MY FELLOW MEMBERS

OF THE COMPARATIVE LAW BUREAU

IN THE HOPE THAT IT MAY PROVE AN ACCEPTABLE CONTRIBUTION

TO THE LITERATURE OF THE NOBLE SCIENCE OF THE LAW

THIS TRANSLATION

OF ONE OF THE MOST VENERABLE MONUMENTS OF JURISPRUDENCE

IS DEDICATED

EDITOR’S PREFACE

It was well said by Gibbon that “Laws form the most important portion of a nation’s history,” for from them, more impartially than from any other source, we derive information of the customs, virtues, vices, political ethics, faults, follies, and religious prejudices of a people. Especially is this true of the Visigothic Code. In it are depicted the traditions and history of a race which, originally nomadic, with unprecedented rapidity became stationary; and, from being for ages subject to institutions formed by the desultory acts of tumultuous assemblies, often dictated by caprice and enmity, in less than two generations acknowledged obedience to a government partly imperial, partly theocratic. In the annals of no people so recently barbarian, is to be found more marked and substantial progress, from the primitive surroundings of pastoral and predatory life, to the tastes, the laws, the refinements, and the social usages of civilization.