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This is a collection of original essays on the settlement of disputes in the early middle ages, a subject of central importance for social and political history. Case material, from the evidence of charters, is used to reveal the realities of the settlement process in the behaviour and interactions of people - instead of the prescriptive and idealised models of law-codes and edicts. The book is not therefore a technical study of charters evidence. The geographical range across Europe is unusually wide, which allows comparison across differing societies. Frankish material is inevitably prominent, but the contributors have sought to integrate Celtic, Greek, Italian and Spanish material into the mainstream of the subject. Above all, the book aims to 'demystify' the study of early medieval law, and to present a radical reappraisal of established assumptions about law and society.

Portrays the power struggles among medieval rulers, sacred and profane

Studies of the advances made by the Visigoths from the decline of the Roman Empire to the seventh century, when their kingdom stretched from the Loire to the Straits of Gibraltar. Studies of the advances made by theVisigoths from the decline of the Roman Empire to the seventh century, when their kingdom stretched from the Loire to the Straits of Gibraltar. Between 376 and 476 the Roman Empire in western Europe was dismantled by aggressive outsiders, "barbarians" as the Romans labelled them. Chief among these were the Visigoths, a new force of previously separate Gothic and other groups from south-west France, initially settled by the Romans but subsequently, from the middle of the fifth century, achieving total independence from the failing Roman Empire, and extending their power from the Loire to the Straits of Gibraltar. These studies draw on literary and archaeological evidence to address important questions thrown up by the history of the Visigoths and of the kingdom they generated: the historical processes which led to their initial creation; the emergence of the Visigothic kingdom in the fifth century; and the government, society, culture and economy of the "mature" kingdom of the sixth and seventh centuries. A valuable feature of the collection, reflecting the switch of the centre of the Visigothic kingdom from France to Spain from the beginning of the sixth century, is the inclusion, in English, of current Spanish scholarship. Dr PETER HEATHER teaches in theDepartment of History at University College London. Contributors: Dennis H. Green, Peter Heather, Ana Jimenez Garnica, Giorgio Ausenda, Ian Nicholas Wood, Isabel Velazquez, Felix Retamero, Pablo C. Diaz, Mayke de Jong, Gisela Ripoll Lopez, Andreas Schwarcz

Coverage includes research on Visigothic identity in Gaul, regional studies of Galacia and Lusitania, anti-Semitism in Visigothic law, the political grammar of Ildephonsus of Toledo, monasticism and liturgy, numismatics, Roman-Visigothic pottery in Baetica, and urban and rural.

Following the collapse of the western Roman Empire, the Franks established in northern Gaul one of the most enduring of the Germanic barbarian kingdoms. They produced a legal code (which they called the Salic law) at approximately the same time that the Visigoths and Burgundians produced theirs, but the Frankish code is the least Romanized and most Germanic of the three. Unlike Roman law, this code does not emphasize marriage and the family, inheritance, gifts, and contracts; rather, Lex Salica is largely devoted to establishing fixed monetary or other penalties for a wide variety of damaging acts such as "killing women and children," "striking a man on the head so that the brain shows," or "skinning a dead horse without the consent of its owner." An important resource for students and scholars of medieval and legal history, made available once again in Katherine Fischer Drew's expert translation, the code contains much information on Frankish judicial procedure. Drew has here rendered into readable English the Pactus Legis Salicae, generally believed to have been issued by the Frankish King Clovis in the early sixth century and modified by his sons and grandson, Childbert I, Chlotar I, and Chilperic I. In addition, she provides a translation of the Lex Salica Karolina, the code as corrected and reissued some three centuries later by Charlemagne.

Barrett, Bryant, Translator. The Code Napoleon, Verbally Translated From the French: To Which is Prefixed an Introductory Discourse, Containing a Succinct Account of the Civil Regulations, Comprised in the Jewish Law, the Ordinances of Menu, the Ta Tsing Leu Lee, the Zend Avesta, the Laws of Solon, the Twelve Tables of Rome, the Laws of the Barbarians, the Assises of Jerusalem, and the Koran. London: W. Reed, 1811. Two volumes. cccxciii, 575 pp. Reprinted 2004 by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. LCCN 2003044238. ISBN 1-58477-381-2. Cloth. $160. * Reprint of the first English edition. Bryant Barrett was an English attorney and member of Gray's Inn. His superb translation is noteworthy in part because it was published the year the Code was enacted. As such, it has the advantage of being in a style of English that is an idiomatic contemporary to the original French. Many scholars believe that this is the finest translation of the Code. Indeed, they have found it to be more accurate than the official Louisiana edition. Barrett's index, which follows the style of English lawyer's common-place books and abridgments, is a thorough guide to the Code. The philological basis of his 393-page introduction had a profound influence on the subsequent development of Classical British legal ethnography.

"Gives the reader a portrayal of the social institutions of a Germanic people far richer and more exhaustive than any other available source."—from the Foreword, by Edward Peters From the bloody clashes of the third and fourth centuries there emerged a society that was neither Roman nor Burgundian, but a compound of both. The Burgundian Code offers historians and anthropologists alike illuminating insights into a crucial period of contact between a developed and a tribal society.