The Visigothic Legacy: Law, Books and Script

The Visigothic kingdom ended in 711, but some of its written traditions continued in different settings. A royal law collection became a reference for later municipal courts; Isidore of Seville’s encyclopedia was copied and excerpted across Europe; and Iberian scribes kept using a distinctive Latin handwriting for centuries. Each tradition traveled by a different route, shaped by the people and institutions that adopted it.

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From royal law to municipal courts

Recceswinth issued the Liber Iudiciorum in the mid-seventh century, bringing royal rules into a large written collection. King Erwig revised it in 681. Its provisions treated matters such as procedure, property, family relations, obligations and penalties. The book arranged rules under subject headings, making it possible for readers to find a provision and apply it to a dispute. It expressed the Visigothic monarchy’s authority to make law; its later use depended on new rulers and communities choosing to keep it.

After the conquest of 711, Christian communities in Iberia continued to use and copy the Latin law book. In the thirteenth century, the rulers of Castile gave it a new municipal role. Ferdinand III’s 1241 charter for Córdoba required judgments to follow the libro juzgo, or “book of the judges.” It directed that cases be heard by the city’s alcaldes, or magistrates, alongside ten respected and knowledgeable townsmen. The charter also ordered the law book translated into Romance, the local vernacular, and named the municipal text the Fuero de Córdoba. In Castilian legal tradition, the collection became known as the Fuero Juzgo. The old royal book thus entered a new arrangement of local officials and a city’s charter.

The date of the first Castilian translation remains uncertain. A Catalan version, called the Llibre dels jutges (“Book of Judges”), survives in fragments. A leaf preserved at the Urgell diocesan archive was dated 1080–1090 by its archive catalogue; paleographers Jesús Alturo and Tània Alaix propose the earlier range 1060–1080. They identify the leaf as a portable summary of the law for judges and assistants. These local translations show the collection being adapted for use in medieval courts.

A reference book made for reuse

Isidore, bishop of Seville in the early seventh century, organized the Etymologies into twenty books. Its title reflects the way many explanations begin with a word’s origin or meaning and then describe the subject behind it. The topics range from grammar, rhetoric and mathematics to medicine, biblical studies, animals, geography, farming, ships, building, clothing and tools. A contents list before many books helped a reader locate a subject without reading the entire volume from the beginning.

That layout suited several kinds of use. A teacher or cleric could consult a particular explanation; a later author could copy passages into another work; and a scribe could reproduce the encyclopedia as a whole. The British Library’s ninth-century manuscript Harley MS 2686, made in western France, preserves all twenty books. Its catalogue records corrections and marginal notes as well as its contents, traces of readers working with the text after its first copying. Other medieval manuscripts preserve complete copies, while separate codices contain excerpts from individual books.

The book’s movement beyond Iberia is visible in these copies. A manuscript at the Abbey Library of St Gall, written after 800, also transmits the twenty-book work. By the late Middle Ages, printers could reproduce it in a new format: Günther Zainer printed the first edition at Augsburg on 19 November 1472. That printed volume extended an established pattern of reuse, from consulting and excerpting handwritten books to making copies for a wider market.

Visigothic handwriting after the kingdom

Visigothic minuscule was a Latin lowercase handwriting used by Iberian scribes. Its letter forms varied with the needs of different manuscript hands. Readers can recognize a rounded, single-storey g, two forms of d and frequent joined letters such as te. The combination made the writing a recognizable regional book hand.

A prayer book now kept at Verona provides an early dated example. The catalogue of Earlier Latin Manuscripts dates it to before 737 and says it was probably written in Spain, perhaps at Tarragona. Its pages contain liturgical prayers and notes added by readers and users. The book’s later annotations trace movement from Sardinia to Pisa and then Verona during the eighth century. Its script traveled with the volume: a ninth-century note was added in Caroline minuscule, the lowercase book hand developed in Carolingian Europe, showing a later writing style entering a book that retained its earlier text.

Scribes continued to use Visigothic minuscule after 711. The Bible copied by Sancho and Florencio at the monastery of Valeránica in 960 is written in this script. Its 515 parchment leaves are arranged in two columns, and the makers’ names and date are preserved with the book. Such a manuscript joined a durable local handwriting to a Christian text that could be read, copied and decorated in a later kingdom.

A gradual change of script

Caroline minuscule spread into Iberian writing, but scribes did not switch everywhere at the same time. The shift formed part of wider ecclesiastical and cultural contacts, including the introduction of Roman liturgy and the movement of pilgrims toward Santiago de Compostela. In Navarra, mixed forms appeared around the end of the eleventh century; royal documents used Caroline writing more consistently under Sancho the Wise, who ruled from 1150 to 1194. In Aragon, Caroline letter forms entered documents under Ramiro II in the 1130s, while Visigothic forms persisted alongside them. The University of Barcelona’s account places the broader replacement in Aragon in the reign of Alfonso II, from 1162 to 1196.

For generations, a reader or clerk might encounter both older and newer handwriting, sometimes even within a transition marked by mixed forms. Older manuscripts remained usable as new writing habits gained ground. The long overlap helps explain why Visigothic script is most visible in medieval books produced after the political kingdom that gave its name to the tradition had disappeared.