Book excerpt: "Gives the reader a portrayal of the social institutions of a Germanic people far richer and more exhaustive than any other available source."—from the Foreword, by Edward Peters From the bloody clashes of the third and fourth centuries there emerged a society that was neither Roman nor Burgundian, but a compound of both. The Burgundian Code offers historians and anthropologists alike illuminating insights into a crucial period of contact between a developed and a tribal society.