t she was innocent. Far from being content with this, the
husband's kin began a fight and the matter ended in a wholesale butchery
at the church of St. Dionysius.

[358] Lex Angliorum et Werinorum, xiv: aut si campionem non habuerit,
ipsa ad novem vomeres ignitos examinanda mittatur.

[359] Leges Liutprandi, vi, 140.

[360] Lex Wisigothorum, iii, 4, 16.

[361] See the interesting story of the girl who slew Duke Amalo, as
narrated by Gregory of Tours, 9, 27.

[362] The bloody nature of the times is depicted naively by Gregory,
Bishop of Tours, who wrote the history of the Franks. See, e.g., the
stories of Ingeltrudis, Rigunthis, Waddo, Amalo, etc., in Book 9.
Gregory was born in 539.

[363] _Corpus Iuris Canonici_ (Friedberg), vol. i, p. 1, _Distinctio
Prima_: ius naturae est quod in lege et _evangelio_ continetur.

CHAPTER V

DIGRESSION OF THE LATER HISTORY OF ROMAN LAW

With Charlemagne, who was crowned Emperor by the Pope in the year 800,
began the definite union of Church and State and the Church's temporal
power. Henceforth for seven centuries, until the Reformation, we shall
have to reckon with canon law as a supreme force in determining the
question of the position of women. A brief survey of the later history
of the old Roman Law will not be out of place in order to note what
influence, if any, it continued to exert down the ages.

The body of the Roman law, compiled by order of Justinian (527-565
A.D.), was intended primarily for the eastern empire; but when, in the
year 535, the Emperor conquered the western Goths, who then ruled Italy,
he ordered his laws taught in the school of jurisprudence at Rome and
practiced in the courts. I have already remarked that the barbarians who
overran Italy allowed the vanquished the right to be judged in most
cases by their own code. But the splendid fabric of the Roman law was
too elaborate a system to win the attentive study of a rude people; the
Church had its own canons, the people their own ancestral customs; and
until the twelfth century no development of the Roman Civil Code took
place. Finally, during the twelfth century, the great school at Bologna
renewed the study with vigour, and Italy at the present day derives the
basic principles of its civil law from the Corpus of Justinian.
Practically the same story holds true of France,[364] of Spain, and of
the Netherlands, all of whom have been influenced particularly by the
great jurists of the sixteen