ABSTRACT
Following the sacking of Rome in 476, the Western Roman Empire disintegrated into a changing kaleidoscope of Germanic kingdoms. Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Franks, and others brought their customary laws to former Roman lands, but they were soon influenced by Roman law. The breach came with the momentous modernization of European society in general, and the law in particular, that took place in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, a watershed of the greatest importance. If the modernization of the law came exceptionally early in England, it was also remarkably systematic. England and Normandy were intellectually very alive and full of enterprising people who were in the forefront of European development. Confidence in the customs of the realm and pride in the royal courts that administered them so efficiently were strong dams against the first civilian waves, whose strength at this early stage was not yet comparable to the maturity and prestige of later centuries.
