The Goths, while yet untainted by the influence of Rome, were no less given to the employment of the judicial duel than their Teutonic kindred, and Theodoric vainly endeavored to suppress the custom among those of his subjects who had remained in Pannonia.[316] That no trace of it is to be found among the extant laws of both Ostrogoths and Wisigoths, framed subsequently to their settlement in Italy, France, and Spain, is easily explained. The effect upon the invaders of the decaying but still majestic civilization of Rome, the Byzantine education of Theodoric, the leader of the Ostrogoths, and his settled policy of conciliating the Italians by maintaining as far as possible the existing state of society, preclude any surprise that no allusion to the practice should occur in the short but sensible code known as the “Edict of Theodoric,” which shows how earnestly that enlightened conqueror endeavored to fuse the invaders and the vanquished into one body politic.[317] With regard to the Wisigoths, we must remember that early conversion to Christianity and long intercourse with civilization had already worn off much of the primitive ferocity of a race which could produce in the fourth century such a man as Ulphilas. They were the earliest of the invaders who succeeded in forming a permanent occupation of the conquered territories; and settling, as they did, in Narbonensian Gaul and Spain while the moral influence of Rome was yet all powerful, the imperial institutions exercised a much greater effect upon them than on the subsequent bands of Northern barbarians. Accordingly, we find their codes based almost entirely upon the Roman jurisprudence, with such modifications as were essential to adapt it to a ruder state of society. Their nicely balanced provisions and careful distinctions offer a striking contrast to the shapeless legislation of the races that followed, and neither the judicial combat nor canonical compurgation found a place in them. Even the vulgar ordeal would appear to have been unknown until a period long subsequent to the conquest of Aquitaine by Clovis, and but little anterior to the overthrow of the Gothic kingdom of Spain by the Saracens. But even as in Italy the Lombard domination destroyed the results of Theodoric’s labors, so in France the introduction of the Frankish element revived the barbarian instincts, and in the celebrated combat before Louis le Débonnaire, between Counts Bera and Sanila, who were both Goths, we find the “pugna duorum” claimed as an ancient privilege of the race, with the distinction of its being equestrian, in accordance with Gothic usages, and so thoroughly was the guilt of Bera considered to be proved by his defeat, that his name became adopted in the Catalan dialect as a synonym of traitor.[318] CHAPTER III. UNIVERSAL USE OF THE JUDICIAL COMBAT.