blood might be redeemed by a
fine; yet the high price of nine hundred pieces of gold declares a
just sense of the value of a simple citizen. Less atrocious injuries,
a wound, a fracture, a blow, an opprobrious word, were measured with
scrupulous and almost ridiculous diligence; and the prudence of the
legislator encouraged the ignoble practice of bartering honor and
revenge for a pecuniary compensation. The ignorance of the Lombards in
the state of Paganism or Christianity gave implicit credit to the malice
and mischief of witchcraft, but the judges of the seventeenth century
might have been instructed and confounded by the wisdom of Rotharis, who
derides the absurd superstition, and protects the wretched victims
of popular or judicial cruelty. [55] The same spirit of a legislator,
superior to his age and country, may be ascribed to Luitprand, who
condemns, while he tolerates, the impious and inveterate abuse of duels,
[56] observing, from his own experience, that the juster cause had often
been oppressed by successful violence. Whatever merit may be discovered
in the laws of the Lombards, they are the genuine fruit of the reason
of the Barbarians, who never admitted the bishops of Italy to a seat in
their legislative councils. But the succession of their kings is marked
with virtue and ability; the troubled series of their annals is adorned
with fair intervals of peace, order, and domestic happiness; and the
Italians enjoyed a milder and more equitable government, than any of
the other kingdoms which had been founded on the ruins of the Western
empire. [57]

[Footnote 52: Paul, l. iii. c. 16. The first dissertations of Muratori,
and the first volume of Giannone's history, may be consulted for the
state of the kingdom of Italy.]

[Footnote 53: The most accurate edition of the Laws of the Lombards
is to be found in the Scriptores Rerum Italicarum, tom. i. part ii.
p. 1--181, collated from the most ancient Mss. and illustrated by the
critical notes of Muratori.]

[Footnote 54: Montesquieu, Esprit des Loix, l. xxviii. c. 1. Les loix
des Bourguignons sont assez judicieuses; celles de Rotharis et des
autres princes Lombards le sont encore plus.]

[Footnote 55: See Leges Rotharis, No. 379, p. 47. Striga is used as the
name of a witch. It is of the purest classic origin, (Horat. epod. v.
20. Petron. c. 134;) and from the words of Petronius, (quae striges
comederunt nervos tuos?) it may be inferred that the prejudice was o