We began this work with a New York Times article, one which questioned the role of marriage in the modern Western world and considered its cultural purpose, and with some thoughts about how the family is changing its meaning in the modern day. The ideas of family, marriage and children in the Western world are shifting under our feet and the law is following, or leading. We have seen remarkable similarities in the period we have studied. We have seen new ideas and cultural conceptions bubble to the surface and appear alongside longstanding, traditional ideas. As the concept of marriage was presented as being a legal document, a pleasurable attachment, a vehicle for licit sex and a vehicle for rejecting sex so too concepts of familial roles shifted and re-shifted.

From the analysis presented here, the Roman/Germanic dichotomy can be seen as a false and imagined division, constructed by authors both ancient and more modern for their own purposes. The codes which on their surface provide such strong support for the fall narrative, and the introduction of codified ‘Germanic’ custom into new cultural contexts, do not offer such strong support when they are fully examined. The codes have a considerable amount in common with late Roman law, significantly more than is different. This conclusion is not a new one. Ruth Mazo Karras, Nick Everett, Ian Wood and many others have offered the same conclusion when looking at individual codes. Here we conclude that this is true for all the post-Imperial codes, and that the authors of the post-Imperial codes aimed to frame themselves as lawmakers in the Roman tradition. Where dramatic differences from Roman law have been noted, it is the influence of Christian thought which was the driver of change. The regulations regarding divorce, abortion and infanticide are particularly relevant here as they came to encompass Christian theological ideas about ensoulment, marriage and charity. There are some exceptions, for example the Frankish preoccupation with land ownership which is not a Roman or Christian idea. However even these do not seem to have emerged from a ‘Germanic’ tradition, but from the cultural and social issues of a period and place where land was of extraordinary importance.