Excerpt from The Visigothic Code 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. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.

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