THE VISIGOTHIC CODE (_FORUM JUDICUM_) TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL LATIN, AND EDITED BY S. P. SCOTT Author of “Through Spain” “History of the Moorish Empire in Europe” Member of the Comparative Law Bureau of the American Bar Association _Lex est magistra vitæ_ I-II-2 BOSTON THE BOSTON BOOK COMPANY 1910 Copyright 1910 BY THE COMPARATIVE LAW BUREAU OF THE AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION _The Riverdale Press, Brookline, Boston, Mass._ 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. An analysis of the Visigothic Code may be made under three heads: historical, descriptive, comparative. Its story is practically that of the Gothic monarchy in Spain. In the variety and scope of its provisions; in the skilful adaptation of its canons to the purposes of ecclesiastical supremacy; in the care with which it preserves the distinctions of caste; in the accuracy and conciseness of its maxims defining the principles of equity; in the elaborate, yet simple, arrangement of its judicial system; in the thoroughly philosophical spirit that pervades the greater portion of its pages; it is radically different from, and, in many respects superior to, all other collections of legal enactments of ancient or mediæval times.