NON-ROMAN LAW IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE

1. Citizen and non-citizen, mixtures of Roman and non-Roman law.
2. The example of Greco-Roman Egypt
3. The mercantile law of the Eastern Mediterranean, e.g., the giving of arrha or earnest money.
4. Celtic elements in the West? The Ligurian inheritance law?
5. Bottom line: the most important non-Roman and non-canonic elements in Western European law that are not the product medieval and modern developments are probably, at least in some sense, Germanic in origin.

ÆTHELBERT’S ‘CODE’

1. The circumstances

From Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation (completed around 732) [From Dorothy Whitelock trans. in English Historical Documents, 2d ed., vol. 1, pp. 663–64]:

‘In the year of our Lord's incarnation 616, which is the 21st year after Augustine with his companions was sent [by Pope Gregory the Great] to preach to the nation of the English, Ethelbert, king of the people of Kent, after his temporal kingdom which he held most gloriously for 56 years, entered into the eternal joys of the heavenly kingdom. He was indeed the third of the kings in the nation of the English to hold dominion over all their southern provinces, which are divided from the northern by the river Humber and boundaries adjoining it; but the first of them all to ascend to the heavenly kingdom. For the first who had sovereignty [imperium] of this kind was Aelle, king of the South Saxons [?c.477–c.491]; the second Caelin, king of the West Saxons [c. 560–c.591], who is their language is called Ceawlin; [five more listed]....

‘Among the other benefits which in his care for his people he conferred on them, he also established for them with the advice of his councillors [cum consilio sapientium] judicial decrees [decreta iudicialia] after the example of the Romans [iuxta exempla Romanorum], which, written in the English language, are preserved to this day and observed by them; in which he first laid down how he who would steal any of the property of the Church, of the bishop, or of other orders, ought to make amends for it, desiring to give protection to those whom, along with their teaching, he had received.’

1. Is Bede’s account to be believed?
2. Did Æthelbert become a Christian?
3. Does the text that Bede had correspond to ours?
4. Did St. Augustine of Canterbury bring literacy to Kent?
5. The possible role of Liudhard, Berhta’s bishop.

2. The Manuscript

The laws of Æthelberht of Kent, the first page of the only manuscript copy, the Textus Roffensis, from the collection of the Dean and Chapter of Rochester Cathedral, now housed in the Medway Archives and Local Studies Centre in Strood (near Rochester), Kent. The photograph is is a download from the archive’s website.

From the frontispiece of H. G. Richardson and G. O. Sayles, Law and Legislation from Æthelberht to Magna Carta ( Edinburgh , 1966).

3. Notes on the Words in Bede

1. decreta iudicialia. The phrase does not have a technical legal meaning, but decretum (the singular of decreta) does: a decision of the emperor in a specific legal case. Iudicialia is derived from iudex, which means ‘judge’. The Anglo-Saxon for decreta iudicialia is domas, which means ‘judgments’. Cf. the Spanish for the Visigothic Code: fuero juzgo, literally ‘the forum of the judge’.
2. The A-S word ae or aew also means law in a more general sense and is cognate with modGer Ehe, ‘marriage’. ‘Fundamental agreement’ might be a good translation. The earliest version of the Salic law of the Franks is called in Latin pactum legis Salicae, the agreement of the Salic law
3. iuxta exempla Romanorum. Literally, “according to the examples of the Romans.” There is no Roman law in Æthelbert’s code, not even a hint. Does this simply mean a written law? or a secular law? or like what the Germanic kings were doing in areas that were thought of as still being parts of the Roman empire?

4. Æthelbert’s Code cc. 1-7, 10 with a Literal Translation

1.         Godes feoh 7 ciricean XII gylde. God’s property and church’s 12 by payment.

2.         Biscopes feoh XI gylde. Bishop’s property 11 by payment.

3.         Preostes feoh IX gylde. Priest’s property 9 by payment.

4.         Diacones feoh VI gylde. Deacon’s property 6 by payment.

5.         Cleroces feoh III gylde. Cleric’s property 3 by payment.

6.         Ciricfri~ II gylde. Church peace 2 by payment.

7.         M[fthl]fri~ II gylde. Assembly peace 2 by payment.

10.       Gif frigman cyninge stele, IX gylde forgylde. If a freeman steals from the king, let him pay forth 9 by payment.

5. Method

1. Elaboration, most notably in cc. 32–71
2. Analogy, implied in many of the provisions to the extent that we doubt that they are all real cases. It seems to be reasonably explicit in cc. 6–7.

6. Outline of Æthelbert's Code

a.         The Church cc. 1–7

b.         The king cc. 8–17

c.         Eorls cc. 18–19

d.         Ceorls cc. 20–71

            cc. 20–31 mundbyrd, wergeld, property offenses

            cc. 32–71 personal injury, arranged from head to toe

e.         Women cc. 72–77

f.          Servants, slaves cc. 78–83

7. Basic Concepts

a.         wergeld. Wer is cognate with Latin vir, a male person; geld is our word ‘gold’ but it’s broader: literally ‘man-payment’ or ‘man-price’.

b.         mundbyrd. The mund part means ‘protection’; it is cognate with Latin manus, ‘hand’. The byrd part is harder, but it is probably related to our word ‘border’, hence mundbyrd is ‘area of protection’.

c.         friþ pronounced frith, cognate with Modern German Friede, ‘peace’.

d.         bot (‘compensation’) occurs very frequently particularly in the verbal form gebete (‘let him make compensation’); wite (‘fine’, ‘penalty’) only once in c.15, but there’s a number of offenses to the king’s mundbyrd

e.         This is clearly not criminal law, but it’s not quite civil either.

f.         One may doubt if these are absolute liability offenses.

8. The sorts and conditions of men: A comparison of Æthelbert’s code and Ine’s (West Saxon, roughly 695)

A TABLE OF WERGELDS

^a In Hlothere & Eadric 1.

^b @ 20 pence to the shilling.

^c @ 5 pence to the shilling.

Price lists from London in the first half of the 10th century value an ox at 30 pennies, a cow at 20, a pig at 10, a sheep at 5. Probably no ordinary ceorl in Athelbert’s Kent could command 400 sheep, and precious few kingroups of ceorlas could.

9. An Insular Comparison

From an Irish Penitential of c.800 (McNeil and Gamer p. 165):

Ch.5 Of anger. 2. Anyone who kills his son or daughter does penance twenty-one years. Anyone who kills his mother or father does penance fourteen years. Anyone who kills his brother or sister or the sister of his mother or father, or the brother of his father or mother, does penance ten years: and this rule is to be followed to seven degrees both of the mother's and father's kinto the grandson and great-grandson and great-great-grandson, and the sons of the great-great-grandson, as far as the finger-nails. ... Seven years of penance are assigned for all other homicides; excepting persons in orders, such as a bishop or a priest, for the power to fix penance rests with the king who is over the laity, and with the bishop, whether it be exile for life, or penance for life. If the offender can pay fines, his penance is less in proportion.

Ch. 4 Of envy. 5. ... There are four cases in which it is right to find fault with the evil that is in a man who will not accept cure by means of entreaty and kindness: either to prevent someone else from abetting him to this evil; or to correct the evil itself; or to confirm the good; or out of compassion for him who does the evil. But anyone who does not do it for one of these four reasons, is a fault-finder, and does penance four days, or recites the hundred and fifty psalms naked.

10. The bottom line

1. An expression of the Volk, the people?—the simplest counterargument to this is the virtually no one in Aethelbert’s Kent could read, much less write.
2. Mystification?—this is a harder argument to counter, but the archaisms in the language do suggest that at least for the bodily offenses there’s an oral substratum
3. The missionaries trying to persuade the Kentings to accept compensation payments in lieu of an obligation to take revenge?—the counter-argument to this is that virtually every society that practices blood-feud also has compensation payments, and Tacitus confirms this for the Germanic peoples
4. An expression of value but not a solvent of controversies?
5. The beginnings of breaking out law and turning it into a specialized activity in a way in which we can see it?