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LECTURE 22 Politicalinstitutions ofthe Visigoths. ......._, PeculiarcharacterofVisigothic legislation. ~ Its authors and its influences. ~ Destruction anddisappearance ofthe middle class in the Roman empire, at the time ofthe Barbarian invasion. ......._, History ofthe Roman municipal system. Three epochs in that history. INconformity to the plan which I sketched out for our guidance at the commencement of these lectures, I have studied with you the political institutions of the Anglo-Saxons and Franks, from the fifth to the tenth century. I now come to those of the Visigoths, the third of the Barbarian peoples established in the Roman empire, about whom I propose to give you some information. On opening the collection ofthe laws ofthe Visigoths, it is impossible not to be struck with the compactness which distinguishes them. The Franks and Burgundians have laws partially anterior to their establishment upon the Roman territory; customs handed down and gathered together from age to age. The Visigoths have a code which was systematically drawn up, and promulgated on an appointed day. This fact alone indicates that the laws ofthe Visigoths were not the work ofthe Barbarians themselves. The influence ofthe clergy, indeed, was more potent among the Visigoths than among the other Barbarian conquerors; not only did the clergy take part in their government, but they acted as their civil and political legislators. The Visigothic code was their work. How did this happen? Before the foundation of the Barbarian States, under the dominion even ofthe last Roman emperors, the power ofthe new religion gradually placed the Christian clergy at the head of the peoples; the bishop was the defender and chiefofthe towns. Mter the conquest, the Barbarians embraced the religion of the vanquished; and as the Christian clergy were powerful in the towns, by virtue ofthe municipal institutions, they used every effort to preserve to the municipal system its form and efficacy. In this they succeeded to a great extent. It is therefore ofessential importance to have some precise knowledge ofthe Roman municipal system and its vicissitudes until the period ofthe great BarbarI 54 LECTURE 22 ian invasions, in order properly to understand the condition of the urban populations at that epoch, and the part which their clergy played in their new position , especially in the kingdom ofthe Visigoths. As I have already observed, the fall ofthe Roman empire in the West is a strange phenomenon. Not only did the population not support the government in its struggles against the Barbarians, but the population, when left to itself, did not attempt any resistance on its own behalf. More than this-nothing, during this protracted conflict, revealed the existence ofa nation; scarce any allusion is made to what it suffered; it endured all the scourges ofwar, pillage, and famine, and suffered an entire change in its destiny and condition, without acting , speaking, or even appearing. This phenomenon is not merely strange, it is unexampled. Despotism has reigned elsewhere than in the Roman empire; more than once, foreign invasion and conquest have devastated countries that had long groaned beneath a tyrannical government. Even where the nation has not resisted, its existence has been manifested in some manner in history. It suffers, it complains, and, notwithstanding its humiliation, it struggles against its evil fate; narratives and monuments attest what it experienced, what it became, and ifnot what it did, at least what was done with it. In the fifth century, the remnants of the Roman legions disputed with hordes ofBarbarians the possession ofthe immense territory ofthe empire, but it seemed as ifthis territory were a desert. When the soldiers ofthe empire had departed or been defeated, mention is made of no other person or thing. The Barbarian tribes seize upon the provinces in succession; beside them, facts exhibit to us only one other real and living existence, that ofthe bishops and the clergy. If the laws did not remain to inform us that a Roman population still covered the soil, history would give us good reason to doubt its existence. It was especially in the provinces which had long been subject to Rome, and wherein civilization was more advanced, that the people thus disappeared. We look upon the letter of the Britons, tearfully imploring the assistance of Aetius and the despatch of a legion, as a singular monument of the cowardice of the subjects of the empire. This astonishment is unjust: the Britons, being less civilized and less Romanized than the other subjects ofthe empire, resisted the Saxons, and their resistance has a history. At the same...

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