6. How the Roman Law kept its Ground in the Demesne of the Lombards.
The facts all coincide with my principles. The law of the Lombards was
impartial, and the Romans were under no temptation to quit their own for
it. The motive which prevailed with the Romans under the Franks to make
choice of the Salic law did not take place in Italy; hence the Roman law
maintained itself there, together with that of the Lombards.
It even fell out that the latter gave way to the Roman institutes,
and ceased to be the law of the ruling nation; and though it continued
to be that of the principal nobility, yet the greatest part of the
cities formed themselves into republics, and the nobility mouldered away
of themselves, or were destroyed.
[46]
The citizens of the new republics
had no inclination to adopt a law which established the custom of
judiciary combats, and whose institutions retained much of the customs
and usages of chivalry. As the clergy of those days, a clergy even then
so powerful in Italy, lived almost all under the Roman law, the number
of those who followed the institutions of the Lombards must have daily
diminished.
Besides, the institutions of the Lombards had not that extent, that
majesty of the Roman law, by which Italy was reminded of her universal
dominion. The institutions of the Lombards and the Roman law could be
then of no other use than to furnish out statutes for those cities that
were erected into republics. Now which could better furnish them, the
institutions of the Lombards that determined on some particular cases,
or the Roman law which embraced them all?
Footnotes
[46]
See what Machiavelli says of the ruin of the ancient nobility of
Florence.
