Visigothic Code

The Visigothic Code (Latin, Forum Iudicum or Liber Iudiciorum; Spanish, Libro de los Juicios) comprises a set of laws promulgated by the Visigothic king of Hispania, Chindasuinth in his second year (642/643). They were enlarged by the novel legislation of Recceswinth (for which reason it is sometimes called the Code of Recceswinth), Wamba, Erwig, Egica, and perhaps Wittiza. In 654 Recceswinth promulgated the code anew after a project of editing by Braulio of Zaragoza, since Chindasuinth's original code had been quickly commissioned and enacted in rough.

They are often called the Lex Visigothorum, law of the Visigoths. However, this code abolished the old tradition of having different laws for Romans and for Visigoths; all the subjects of the kingdom would stop being romani and gothi to become hispani. In this way, all the subjects of the kingdom were gathered under the same jurisdiction, eliminating social apart from juridical differences.

The laws were far-reaching and long in effect: in 10th century Galicia, monastic charters make reference to the Code (Fletcher 1984, ch. 1, note 56). The laws govern and sanction family life and by extension political life—the marrying and the giving in marriage, the transmission of property to heirs, the safeguarding of the rights of widows and orphans. Particularly with the Visigoth Law Codes, women could inherit land and title and manage it independently from their husbands or male relations, dispose of their property in legal wills if they had no heirs, and women could represent themselves and bear witness in court by age 14 and arrange for their own marriages by age 20 .

The laws combine the Catholic Church's Canon law, and have a strongly theocratic tone.

The code is known to have been preserved by the Moors, as Christians were permitted the use of their own laws, where they did not conflict with those of the conquerors, upon the regular payment of tribute; thus it may be presumed that it was the recognized legal authority of Christian magistrates while the Iberian Peninsula remained under Muslim control. When Ferdinand III of Castile took Córdoba in the thirteenth century, he ordered the code to be adopted and observed by its citizens, and caused it to be rendered, albeit inaccurately, into Castilian, as the Fuero Juzgo. The Catalan translation of this document is the oldest literary text found in that language (c. 1150).