Code of Euric

The Codex Euricianus, or Code of Euric, was a collection of laws governing the Visigoths compiled at the order of Euric, King of the Visigoths, sometime before 480, probably at Toulouse, making it one of the earliest examples of early Germanic law; the compilation itself was the work of Leo, a Roman lawyer and the king's principal counsellor, and it recognized and affirmed the customs of the Visigothic nation, though it is largely confused and appears to be a recollection of Gothic custom altered by Roman law. The code entrenches a clear stratification of Gothic and Gallo-Roman society, distinguishing lords, called domini or patroni depending on whether they held slaves or freemen, from two classes of freemen who stood beneath lords, the buccellarii and the saiones, and it was the first legal recognition of the buccellariatus, a knightly office the Roman emperors had been trying to ban, whose members could change lords but had to return any landed benefices received from a former one. Among its other provisions, the Codex Euricianus governed border disputes arising from the division of land between the settled Gothic conquerors and Romanesque landowners, as well as lending, purchase, donation, marriage and succession.