Table Of ContentWergild, Compensation and Penance
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Medieval Law and Its Practice
Edited by
John Hudson (St Andrews)
Editorial Board
Paul Brand (All Souls College, Oxford)
Emanuele Conte (Universita Roma Tre/ ehess, Paris)
Maribel Fierro (ILC-CCHS, CSIC)
Dirk Heirbaut (University of Ghent)
Richard Helmholz (University of Chicago)
Caroline Humfress (St Andrews)
Magnus Ryan (Peterhouse, Cambridge)
Robin Chapman Stacey (University of Washington)
Danica Summerlin (The University of Sheffield)
volume 31
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/mlip
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Wergild, Compensation
and Penance
The Monetary Logic of Early Medieval
Conflict Resolution
Edited by
Lukas Bothe
Stefan Esders
Han Nijdam
LEIDEN | BOSTON
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DFG Collaborative Research Centre 700 – Governance in Areas of
Limited Statehood (2010–2017)
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Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments vii
List of Figures and Tables ix
Abbreviations x
Contributors xi
1 Wergild and the Monetary Logic of Early Medieval Conflict
Resolution 1
Stefan Esders
2 Observations Concerning the ‘Wergild System’: Explanatory
Approaches, Effectiveness and Structural Deficits 38
Harald Siems
3 Monetary Fines, Penalties and Compensations in Late Antiquity 65
Ralph W. Mathisen
4 Wergeld: The Germanic Terminology of Compositio and Its
Implementation in the Early Middle Ages 92
Wolfgang Haubrichs
5 Wergild, Mund and Manbot in Early Anglo-Saxon Law 113
Lisi Oliver†
6 Compensation, Honour and Idealism in the Laws of Æthelberht 133
Tom Lambert
7 Wergild and Honour: Using the Case of Frisia to Build a Model 161
Han Nijdam
8 Triplice Weregeldum: Social and Functional Status in the Lex
Ribuaria 183
Lukas Bothe
9 Penance and Satisfaction: Conflict Settlement and Penitential Practices
in the Frankish World in the Early Middle Ages 212
Rob Meens
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vi Contents
10 The Limits of Government: Wergild and Legal Reforms under
Charlemagne 240
Karl Ubl
11 Wergild in the Carolingian Formula Collections 261
Warren Brown
12 The Kin’s Collective Responsibility for the Payment of Man’s
Compensation in Medieval Denmark 277
Helle Vogt
13 Concluding Thoughts from England and the ‘Western Legal
Tradition’ 293
Paul Hyams
Index 323
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Preface and Acknowledgments
The present volume is the result of an initial observation that the theme of
wergild, although immensely important in (early) medieval culture and
prominent in numerous sources, has been understudied in the last decades.
Although wergild might at first sight appear as a very special aspect of medi-
eval law, it becomes soon obvious that it can provide a key to understanding
medieval societies — their modes of conflict settlement, but also their social
cohesion and mentalities. With its focus on the payment of wergild, the vol-
ume thus documents a process of reflecting this topic that evolved over the
years. The editors first met at the International Medieval Congress in Leeds in
2011 to organize two sessions titled ‘Establishing a Person’s Worth: Approaches
to Wergeld and Composition’. The positive feedback we received inspired us
to convene an international conference on the same topic, but in an extended
perspective. Thus, ‘Wergild, Compensation and Penance. The Monetary Logic
of Early Medieval Conflict Resolution’ was held 29 and 30 September 2014 at
the Freie Universität Berlin, in a collaborative effort of the DFG Collaborative
Research Centre 700 — Governance in Areas of Limited Statehood (Stefan
Esders and Lukas Bothe) and the Frisian Academy (Han Nijdam). Having
engaged in lively discussions at the conference, most of the speakers were will-
ing and able to convert their presentations into contributions to this present
volume. We hope that it can stimulate further research on what still seems to
be a fairly neglected topic.
A few remarks need to be made on the scope and content of this volume.
The main focus of its contributions is on the legal history of wergild and on
monetary conflict resolution in the early medieval period, sometimes in rela-
tion to the late antique predecessors of the cases described. In a number of
cases a comparative approach is taken, which often leads to the use of the very
inspiring studies of later medieval Scandinavia that have been written lately.
However, even though legal texts from later medieval Scandinavia have been
considered, the large body of Icelandic saga literature remains immaterial to
this volume. Moreover, a comparative approach that extends beyond Christian
Europe remains to be taken. As legal and technical language figures promi-
nently on numerous occasions, a final remark concerns the use of Latin in the
contributions: for the sake of accessibility, we have tried to provide as many
translations of the Latin quotations as possible. Being well aware of our aim’s
limitations, we cited existing translations where available and provided our
own where necessary.
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viii Preface and Acknowledgments
A great number of people helped in the various phases of this project and
deserve our gratitude. First of all we would like to thank our contributors for
their patience and endurance. Getting this volume done took us more time
than we had ever hoped or feared. In chronological order we would further
like to thank the moderators of the IMC sessions, Arnoud-Jan Bijsterveld and
Alice Rio, and also Christophe Camby, who contributed to one of the Leeds
sessions. Our thanks go also to the participants of the Berlin conference for
their contributions and participation in an intense discussion: especially
Jenny Benham, Christoph Meyer, Nurit Tsafrir, the late Miriam Czock, Ludger
Körntgen, Marianne Elsakkers and Miriam Tveit.
Our special thanks go to John Hudson for allowing this volume to find a
fitting place in the series “Medieval law and its practice”. The people at Brill
Publishers were extremely helpful and supportive, in particular we would like
to thank acquisition editor Kate Hammond and Marcella Mulder. We would
also like to express our gratitude to the unknown peer reviewer for the benefi-
cial review and constructive critique of the volume.
Finally, we are extremely grateful to our student assistants Michael Eber,
Felix Fischer, Anna Gehler-Rahůnek, Gerd Krause, Friederike Michel and
Victor Wagner who helped us in various stages of the project. In the course of
producing this book, Courtnay Konshuh and Keith Ruiter accurately checked
and revised the contributions by authors who are not native speakers of
English, while Albert Fenton created the index. Without all their help, this vol-
ume would not have come into being.
Lisi Oliver, an inspiring scholar of early medieval law and a wonderful col-
league, contributed hugely to bringing people together at the symposium in
Berlin. Both her talk and her overall presence were absolutely stimulating and
remain unforgettable for those who were present. Lisi sadly passed away sud-
denly on June 7, 2015 in a tragic traffic accident and is greatly missed by every-
one who knew her. We would like to extend our huge gratitude to Lisi’s close
colleagues Andrew Rabin and especially Stefan Jurasinski for their help with
asking permission from Lisi’s heirs to have her contribution to this volume
published and with finalizing the article. It is to the memory of Lisi Oliver that
we would like to dedicate this volume.
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Figures and Tables
Figures
1.1 Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek, Cod. Pal. germ. 164, fol. 11v (courtesy of
Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg) 2
1.2 Wolfenbüttel, Herzog-August-Bibliothek, Cod. Guelf. 3.1 Auf. 2°, fol. 49r
(courtesy of Herzog-August-Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel) 32
3.1 Section of an otherwise unknown law of Anastasius establishing fines for
failing to deal with legal cases expeditiously (Littmann, Magie and Stuart, Syria,
24–42) 66
3.2 Solidus issued in the name of the Caesar Crispus, ca. 320 CE (http://www
.romancoins.info/VIC-Historical2.html) 70
3.3 Coins from the Hódmezövásárhely-Szikáncs hoard, Hungarian National
Museum in Budapest (photo by Mathisen) 78
3.4 Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Pal. lat. 1615, fol.9r. (courtesy of
Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana) 89
7.1 Model of embodied honour for medieval Frisia (created by Nijdam) 176
Tables
3.1 Examples of confiscations from Ammianus Marcellinus (created by
Mathisen) 76
3.2 Fines from Coptic papyrological sources (courtesy of Leslie S. B. MacCoull,
personal communication) 82
5.1 Wergild and Worth in Kent and Wessex (created by Oliver) 118
5.2 Mund, manbot and the worth of slaves in Æthelberht’s laws (created by
Oliver) 122
5.3 Wergild, mund and manbot in later Kent (created by Oliver) 122
5.4 Comparison of violations of mund in Kent and Wessex (created by Oliver) 123
5.5 mund and manbot in Wessex (created by Oliver) 124
7.1 Overview of the content of the Old Frisian compensation tariffs (created by
Nijdam) 169
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Abbreviations
CCSL Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina
MGH Monumenta Germaniae Historica (and its following subseries)
AA Auctores antiquissimi
Capit. Capitularia regum Francorum
DD Diplomata
EE Epistolae
Fontes iuris Fontes iuris Germanici antiqui in usum scholarum separatim
editi
LL Leges (in Folio)
LL nat. Germ. Leges nationum Germanicarum
SS Scriptores
HRG Handwörterbuch zur Deutschen Rechtsgeschichte
LexMA Lexikon des Mittelalters
RGA Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde
Transactions Transactions of the Royal Historical Society
of RHS
ZRG Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte
GA Germanistische Abteilung
KA Kanonistische Abteilung
RA Romanistische Abteilung
Bibliographical note:
Throughout the footnotes and bibliographies superscript numbers before years mark
the edition of the work cited (e.g. Heinrich Brunner, Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte vol. 1,
Leipzig 21906 = second edition, Leipzig 1906).
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