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Facing the crisis of the 3^rd century, Diocletian (284-305) carried out an administrative, military and economic restructuring of the Roman Empire. The three provinces of Hispania were divided into five regions: ''Tarraconensis, Cartaginensis, Baetica, Lusitania'' and ''Gallaecia''. However, economic reform brought poverty. Slaves, who were very costly, were emancipated and inevitably became peasants, servants, manual labourers, and even, personal bodyguards for the lords and their possessions. The development of this system of multiple autonomous regions with a central governing power (which also protected life against hunger or thieves), forebode the manorial system of feudalism.

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Over the course of the 6^th century, Hispania gradually ceased to be Hispano-Roman and by the 7^th century, started to become Hispano-German. With King Leovigild at the helm (568-586) the Visigoths united the territory and attacked the villages in the north (573-581) as well as the Suevi (585) and the Byzantines, who had arrived on the Peninsula during the territorial expansion led by Emperor Justinian. Recaredo (586-601), Justinian´s successor, renounced Arianism, the official Visigoth religion and accepted the Nicene Creed, as did the Hispano-Romans. King Suintila (621-631) expelled the last of the Byzantines and it is posited that King Recceswinth may have been the leader who in 654 unified the German and Latin laws to create the Visogothic law code ''Liber Iudiciorum''. This legal system was in effect in the Hispanic kingdoms throughout the High Middle Ages. The institutional structure of the Visigothic Kingdom included legislative assemblies (the ''concilios'') where nobles and clergymen took decisions, great halls in an imperial or royal palace (aula regia or ''cincilium regis''), a Royal household imitating the Roman Imperial Model (''officium palatinum''), borders, an army, and a currency. Saint Isidore recognised in his ''Laus Hispaniae'' that: "You are, oh Hispania, sacred mother... the most beautiful of all lands... from the West to India... You are the honour and ornament of the world, the most illustrious... And therefore... golden Rome loves you and... the nation of the Goths... it now rejoices in you... with security and happiness".

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