02-26-2014, 06:48 PM
Quote:No it really wasn't. It slowly devolved back into a militia system (more or less), but if you read the Lex Gundobada, or Lex Euriacum (or is it Euriacensis?) their laws regarding Civil and Military organization are almost the same. The differences lie in some traditions carried over in each system, as well as terms established by a feodus (e.g. 1/3 sortes allotment in Roman law and 2/3 sortes allotment in Burgundian).
It was, at the point that you could live under Merovingian rule and preserving your Roman law.
The Germanic Law was based on other principles and other values, in the Langobardic Kingdom of Italy if you was a Langobard, that is, if you could enumerate your last ten ancestors on father line, you was an Arimannus, that is, a free man, if not, you was a Roman but you was not a free man, you had your law but you couldn't carry weapons and serve in the army, even if this situation changed after 100 years, it's a clear sign of the totally new conditions and of the totally new cultural atmosphere of the new Kingdoms, because exactly the same can be said for the Merovingian Kingdom and the other Germanic Kingdoms.
What happened in Britain it was the total deletion of any trace of the Roman state.
If you think that the Roman State survived into the Germanic Kingdoms of the VI and VII centuries you are dreaming! If you think that any trace of Roman Military organization survived in the Early Middle Age your dream may be called a hallucination, exchanging the birth of the Feudal Europe with the prosecution of the Roman Military professional Army it is really Science Fiction, and again I cannot follow you on this way, it's too much for me..
Well, at this point, good sleep my dear! :wink:
