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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.