Research on Visigothic history is severely constrained by the paucity of available evidence. In many areas, historians are all but blind and will probably remain so in the future unless new sources turn up unexpectedly, as has recently happened. Most of the documentation on which scholars can ground their historical discourse is normative, and to a lesser extent narrative, hence indicating that some avenues of research are easier to explore than others. Penal history is one such avenue. In the Visigothic realm, as in other geographical areas, it has been traditionally addressed mainly by jurists; yet, historians, too, have something to say about legal history, as has been made plain by recent (and not so recent) developments in scholarship concerning the Later Roman Empire. In the Visigothic kingdom of Toledo, royal power relied on the law both to ensure its own legitimacy and to exercise political control over the elites; accordingly, studying political power involves an awareness of legal history and especially the history of punishment.

Fines apart, Visigothic penalties affected convicts either physically or in their legal capacity. The loss of some or all civil rights (the latter involving confiscation) could be compounded by decalvatio (itself a supplementary penalty), flogging, exile, enslavement, or death. I will focus here on exile, which was inherited from Roman law in several forms.

Exile originally was a capital penalty, a simple circumvention of death, designed as a privilege for the few.