Editing Ostrogoths (section)

==Culture==
[[File:Orecchini ostrogoti.jpg|thumb|Ostrogoth ear jewels, Metropolitan Museum of Art]]

Surviving Gothic writings in the [[Gothic language]] include the Bible of [[Ulfilas]] and other religious writings and fragments. In terms of Gothic legislation in [[Latin]], one finds the [[edict of Theodoric]] from around the year 500, and the ''Variae'' of Cassiodorus, which may also pass as a collection of the state papers of Theodoric and his immediate successors. Among the Visigoths, written laws had already been put forth by [[Euric]]. Alaric II put forth a Breviarium of [[Roman law]] for his Roman subjects; but the great collection of Visigothic laws dates from the later days of the monarchy, being put forth by King [[Reccaswinth]] about 654. This code gave occasion to some well-known comments by Montesquieu and [[Edward Gibbon|Gibbon]], and has been discussed by Savigny (''Geschichte des römischen Rechts'', ii. 65) and various other writers. They are printed in the ''Monumenta Germaniae, leges'', tome i. (1902).{{sfn|Freeman|1911|p=275}}
 
Amid Gothic histories that remain, besides that of the frequently quoted Jordanes, there is the Gothic history of [[Isidore]], archbishop of [[Seville]], a special source of the history of the Visigothic kings down to [[Suinthila]] (621–631). But all the Latin and [[Greek language|Greek]] writers contemporary with the days of Gothic predominance also made their contributions. Not for special facts, but for a general estimate, no writer is more instructive than [[Salvian of Marseilles]] in the 5th century, whose work, ''De Gubernatione Dei'', is full of passages contrasting the vices of the Romans with the virtues of the "barbarians", especially of the Goths. In all such pictures one must allow a good deal for exaggeration both ways, but there must be a groundwork of truth. The chief virtues that the [[Roman Catholic]] [[presbyter]] praises in the Arian Goths are their chastity, their piety according to their own creed, their tolerance towards the Catholics under their rule, and their general good treatment of their Roman subjects. He even ventures to hope that such good people may be saved, notwithstanding their [[Christian heresy|heresy]]. This image must have had some basis in truth, but it is not very surprising that the later Visigoths of Iberia had fallen away from Salvian's somewhat idealistic picture.{{sfn|Freeman|1911|p=275}}