Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/79

 IV] TRANSMISSION OF THE ROAIAN LAW 61 codes were written in Latin, which could not fail to affect their substance. Besides these marks of Roman influence, even the Lex Salica, the earliest and purest of the Germanic codes, shows some slight traces of Roman law.^ The same is true of the Lex Rihuaria, which was in large part a working-over of the Lex ScUica. In the Lex Burgundionum of Gondobada, the king of the Burgun- dians, and in the Visigothic codes, the influence of Ro- man provincial law is still more obvious. In revisions of the Visigothic codes references to eloquence and philosophy show the effect of Roman culture, and the participation of the Roman clergy in their composition is also apparent. The Lombards appear to have kept their early codes the freest from Roman legal notions.* There was still another great current by which Ro- man law was transmitted to the Middle Ages. After the establishment of Germanic kingdoms the clergy continued to live under Roman law as their personal law,' in France using mainly the Breviarium, and in Italy portions of the legislation of Justinian. The principle that the clergy should be judged by a per- sonal law of their own endured long after the law of the person as applied to other men had made way for the principle of the law of the land. This law of the person for the clergy became the Canon law. 1 The first redaction of the Salic law was made in the reign of Clovia, before his conversion (496 a.d.). (713A.D.). See Savigny, OtKh., I, pp. 123. 124. 129; II, p. 219; Bmnner, DeuUche Rget., Bd. I, $ 03. Cf. Hodgkin, Italy and her Invaders, Vol. VI, Bk. VII, Chape. B and 10. • Ecclesia rivit lege Bomana, Lex EibuaHa, 88.
 * These are the Codes of Rothari (643 a.d.) and of Luitprand