Why has the Liber Iudiciorum (or, Lex Visigothorum), the grand legal-historical narrative of seventh-century Iberia, been categorized as Germanic? From where did this categorical ascription derive, why, and what are the consequences? The...
moreWhy has the Liber Iudiciorum (or, Lex Visigothorum), the grand legal-historical narrative of seventh-century Iberia, been categorized as Germanic? From where did this categorical ascription derive, why, and what are the consequences? The Liber Iudiciorum was constructed and issued in the middle of the Iberian Peninsula (in Toledo) by people born in that land, brought up with local culture, and who relied on a legal and literary tradition endemic to Iberian regions and the broader Mediterranean. Yet, the Liber Iudiciorum has been, over the course of four centuries, categorized as ‘Germanic’. In this presentation, I will demonstrate the figure-ground of this categorization – early modern political rhetoric, which established competing historiographies about the text’s meaning, purpose, and origins – and from that work to invalidate the rhetorical ‘Germanic’ claims and the dialectical ‘truth’ that transpired.
Most of the attendees of this conference (and readers of this abstract) will be familiar with the general historiography of early medieval law and literature, from the nineteenth-century forward, and understand, therefore, the constellation of modern(ist) nationalism, racism, philology, antiquarianism, the development of historical ‘science’ and ultimately fascism that cemented a ‘Germanic’ heritage for the Liber Iudiciorum. Some will also be well-versed in the history of the late modern poststructuralist (from Saussure) and then postmodernist turns, as they were taken-up by historical scholarship. During this moment, scholars employed new forms of reading and representing the early medieval Iberian past, which recognized the centrality of language to ‘facts’ and so identity. This led to novel ways of thinking about our abilities to ‘know’ the Visigothic texts and their meanings, and to challenge modernist claims about heritage. Yet, it stands that the latest edition – a product of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica – and the [effectively useless] translation of the Liber Iudiciorum – both more than a century old – and much of the scholarship on the code since, refer to it in problematic categorical ways. Today’s metamodernist scholars are reintroducing uncritical, a-theoretical objectivist truth claims, including ethnographic categories such as ‘Germanic’ (which would be ironic here, if one still saw historiography as a knowledge that builds upon itself).
The romantic, modern origins of Germanicism may be evident to most scholars, thanks to recent work in the field. However, these origins were not the a priori product of the modern world and its classicized ethnography of the Early Middle Ages. This presentation will show that the ideas that forged them are rooted in historical acts of early modern scholars and their inaugural editions of the Liber Iudiciorum: Pierre Pithou’s Codicis legum Wisigothorum libri XII, printed in Paris by Sèbastien Nivèlle on the ides of March 1579; André Schott’s Hispania Illustratae, printed in Frankfurt by Claudium Marnium in 1606; and Friedrich Lindenbrog’s Codex Legum antiquarum, in quo continentur leges Wisigothorum, printed in Frankfurt by Iohannis and Andrea Marne in 1613 (the Madrid edition of 1600 will be noted separately in the talk). Pithou rightly created for the Liber Iudiciorum an Iberian heritage, which was followed in Britain well into the 1600s. Schott followed Pithou by further entrenching the narrative of Spanish origins (elaborated by the Madrid edition). The Lindenbrog edition was the first to cut from the existing Anglo-Belgian-French-Spanish tradition(s) by claiming explicitly that the Liber Iudiciorum was evidence of ‘the gloriousness of the Germans’, and should be published to provide further historical grounding for German greatness. From this would emerge the ahistoricizing dialectic that we (Visigothic scholars) are yet to fully overcome.