Burgundian Code

The Burgundian Code, or Lex Burgundionum, is the law code of the Burgundian people and an early fusion of Germanic tribal law with Roman legal practice. It was probably issued by King Gundobad, who reigned from 474 to 516, with the codification beginning around 483, and it may have been revised further by his successor Sigismund, who reigned from 516 to 523. It covers domestic matters such as marriage and inheritance and sets out weregild, monetary compensation owed for physical injury, distinguishing between cases involving two Burgundians and cases between a Burgundian and a Roman subject; a companion code, the Lex Romana Burgundionum, applied separately to the kingdom's Roman population. The historian Katherine Fischer Drew has called it the most influential of the barbarian law codes, noting that it survived the Frankish conquest of Burgundy and remained in use into the ninth century; its oldest surviving manuscript dates from that century.