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LECTURE X--THE LOMBARD LAWS
I have tried to shew you how the Teutonic nations were Christianized.
I have tried to explain to you why the clergy who converted them
were, nevertheless, more or less permanently antagonistic to them. I
shall have, hereafter, to tell you something of one of the most
famous instances of that antagonism: of the destruction of the
liberties of the Lombards by that Latin clergy. But at first you
ought to know something of the manners of these Lombards; and that
you may learn best by studying their Code.
They are valuable to you, as giving you a fair specimen of the laws
of an old Teutonic people. You may profitably compare them with the
old Gothic, Franco-Salic, Burgundian, Anglo-Saxon, and Scandinavian
laws, all formed on the same primaeval model, agreeing often in
minute details, and betokening one primaeval origin, of awful
antiquity. By studying them, moreover, you may gain some notion of
that primaeval liberty and self-government, common at first to all
the race, but preserved alone by England;--to which the descendants
of these very Lombards are at this very moment so manfully working
their way back.
These laws were collected and published in writing by king Rothar,
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