Note 16 — BOOK III. CONCERNING MARRIAGE.

The crime of rape was considered by the Visigothic legislator in the original and broader acceptation of the term, and not according to the more limited significance attaching to it at the present day. It included, therefore, the offences of abduction and kidnapping; all survivals of practices observed by mankind in their natural condition; one of whose customs, marriage by capture, still prevails among certain barbarous nations. By the Visigoths, as by the Romans, rape, theft, and some other crimes, were classed as private wrongs, to be expiated by the infliction of personal vengeance. For this reason, the ravisher was delivered up to the tender mercies of the relatives of the victim; or, reduced to servitude, he was compelled to serve the latter for life.—[Ed.]