Book Twenty-Eight - Concerning The Origin and Revolutions of The Civil Laws among The French

Summary

In nova fert animus mutates dicereformas Corpora…

Ovid, Metamorphoses

Chapter 1: About the Different Character of the German Peoples's Laws

The Franks having left their country, they caused the Salic laws to be digested by the wise of their nation. (a) The tribe of Ripuarian Franks having joined with that of the Salian Franks, under Clovis (b), it preserved its practices, while Theodoric (c), King of Austrasia, caused them to be placed in writing. He similarly collected the practices of the Bavarians and Germans (d) who were subject to his kingdom. For Germany being weakened by the exit of so many peoples, the Franks, after having conquered ahead of themselves, made a step backwards and carried their domination into the forests of their fathers. There is some appearance that the code of the Thuringians was given by the same Theodoric (e), since the Thuringians were also his subjects. The Frisians having been subdued by Charles Martel and Pepin, their law is not anterior to those princes (ff ). Charlemagne, who first conquered the Saxons, gave them the law that we have. One only has to read those two last codes in order to see that they come from the hands of conquerors. The Visigoths, Burgundians, and Lombards, having founded kingdoms, caused their laws to be written, not in order to make conquered peoples follow their practices but in order to follow them themselves.

In the Salic and Ripuarian laws, in those of the Alemanni, the Bavarians, the Thuringians and Frisians, there is an admirable simplicity. One finds in them an original rusticity, and a spirit which had not been weakened by a different spirit. They changed little, for those peoples (if one excepts the Franks) remained in Germany. The Franks even founded a large part of their empire there; thus were their laws wholly Germanic. It was not the same in this for the laws of the Visigoths, Lombards, and Burgundians. Their laws lost much of their character, because those peoples, who settled in their new dwellings, lost much of their own.

The kingdom of the Burgundians did not endure sufficiently long that the conquering people's laws might be able to receive any great changes. Gundibald and Sigismond, who collected their practices, were almost the last of their kings. The Lombards’ laws received additions rather than changes.