During the reign of Euric, in the year 479, was codified and published the first book of Gothic law, the basis of the subsequent complex and exhaustive system of jurisprudence which increased in size, and gathered reverence and authority with the reign of each succeeding sovereign. It was known as the Forum Judicum, or the Book of Judges, and consisted mainly of a compilation of the rules applicable to the various customs and ordeals, which had been approved by time and experience as beneficial in the administration of the government of the Gothic nation, combined with such maxims of Roman law as had gradually been absorbed through frequent association with the courts and magistrates of the empire. The new rights and duties arising from the acceptance by the Goths of the orthodox belief in the latter half of the sixth century, necessitated a revision of the existing laws and the formulation of another code of far more extensive scope than the one which already existed. By certain provisions of the former the constitution of the Iberian church was definitely established and the predominance of the clergy in secular matters assured; measures of portentous significance, whose evil effects upon the intelligence and prosperity of the Spanish people are discernible even in our day. From the date of its adoption and promulgation, the inhabitants of the Peninsula were, without exception, declared subject to its statutes. From this time dates the absolute supremacy of the Church in the Peninsula. The hold which it then obtained upon temporal affairs it has never relaxed. The awful consequences of that supremacy upon all classes and conditions of men owing allegiance to the Spanish crown are familiar to every reader of history.