Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/158

 122 THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE to which the Germans themselves were not accustomed, was not as oppressive in their kingdoms as in the late Empire. When the Byzantine emperor reconquered North Africa, the overtaxed peasants sighed for the easier days of Vandal rule. The German invaders retained their own laws and courts, and their customs were now for the first time written down — in Latin. The Roman population in cases be- tween themselves were allowed the benefit of their own Roman law to which they were accustomed and the German king usually had a statement of it made in writing also — generally a crude, meager code compared to j the masterpieces of Roman jurisprudence in the days of Ulpian, Paulus, and Papinian. Euric (466-484), the most i notable king of the West Goths since Alaric and under whom their expansion in Gaul reached its height and their conquest of Spain was begun, published the laws of the 5 Visigoths, our earliest fragments of German legislation. His son, Alaric II, just before he was conquered and slain by Clovis, had issued a compilation of Roman law for the use of his Latin subjects in Gaul and Spain, which to-day is known as the Breviary 0} Alaric. The Franks adopted it for their Gallo-Roman subjects. The Salic law was written down in Clovis's reign and the customs of the Ripuarian Franks somewhat later. About 500, King Gundobad pub- lished a code of laws for both Burgundians and Romans, but later added a special code for Romans only. About ; the same time in Italy appeared the Edict of Theodoric, a brief compilation of Roman law. No code of Vandal law is extant, but we know of particular legislation by the kings, who also frequently interfered in legal proceedings. The Anglo-Saxons in Britain and the Lombards in Italy committed their laws to writing at the end of the sixth and during the seventh century, while the customs of the Alamanni, Thuringians, Bavarians, and Saxons were not reduced to writing until the seventh and eighth centuries. In the middle of the seventh century Romans and West Goths in Spain were brought under one system of law at