Chapter 1: About Feudal Laws

I would believe that there were an imperfection in my work, if I silently passed over an event that once occurred in the world, and that will never perhaps reoccur; if I did not speak of those laws that one saw come to sight in a moment in the whole of Europe, without their clinging to what folk until then had known; of those laws that have produced an infinity of goods and evils; that have left some rights upon yielding territory; that, in giving to several persons differing kinds of lordship over the same thing or over the same persons, have diminished the weight of the entire lordship; that have produced regulation with a tendency toward anarchy, and anarchy with a tendency toward order and harmony.

This would demand a dedicated work; but, given the nature of this one, one will rather find here those laws as I have envisaged them than as I have treated them.

It is a beautiful spectacle, that of the feudal laws. An ancient oak grows (a); from far off the eye sees its leaves; one draws near, one sees its branch; but one does not perceive the roots: it is necessary to pierce the earth to discover them.

Chapter 2: About the Sources of Feudal Laws

The peoples that conquered the Roman empire came out of Germany. Although few ancient authors have described their morals for us, we do have two that have very great weight. Caesar, waging war against the Germans, described the Germans’ morals (ab); and it is on the basis of those morals that he based some of his undertakings (bc). A few of Caesar's pages on this subject are volumes.

Tacitus made a work explicitly about the morals of the Germans. It is short, this work; but it is the work of Tacitus, which abridged all because he says all.

These two authors work in such harmony with the barbarian peoples’ law codes that we have, that in reading Caesar and Tacitus one find those codes throughout, and in reading those codes one finds Caesar and Tacitus throughout.

Now, if in researching the feudal laws I see myself in an obscure labyrinth, full of pathways and detours, I believe that I hold the end of the thread, and that I can move ahead.