Table Of ContentThe Laws of the Salian Franks
University of Pennsylvania Press
MIDDLE AGES SERIES
Ruth Mazo Karros, Editor
Edward Peters, Founding Editor
A complete listing of the books in this series
is available from the publisher
The Laws of
the Salian franks
Translated and
with an Introduction by
Katherine Fischer Drew
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia
Copyright © 1991 University of Pennsylvania Press
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly
citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written
permission from the publisher.
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3
Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lex Salica. English.
The laws of the Salian Franks / translated and with an introduction by Katherine Fischer
Drew
p. cm. — (Middle Ages series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-I3: 978-0-8122-1322-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-io: o-8i22-ij22-X (pbk. : alk. paper)
i. Salic law. 2. Law, Prankish. 3. Law, Medieval. I. Drew, Katherine Fischer.
II. Tide. III. Series.
KJ336.E5 1991
340.5's-dc20 90-21755
Contents
Foreword vii
Introduction 1
I. The Roman World and the Germanic Franks 3
II. Roman Law and Germanic Law 12
The Law of the Western Empire at the Time of the Invasions 12
Roman Law and the Germanic Barbarians 20
III. The Franks as Seen Through Their Law Code 28
Background of Lex Salica 28
The Prankish State 31
The Prankish Judicial System 32
The Family and Kin Group 39
Marriage 41
Inheritance 43
Social Classes 45
The Prankish Economic Scene 49
Violence, Theft, Homicide 50
IV. Transmission of Lex Scdica and This Translation 52
PACTUS LEGIS SALICAE: The 65-Title Version of the
Code Ascribed to Clovis Plus the Later Sixth-Century
Additions 57
LEX SALICA KAROLINA: Systematic Version 169
Notes 227
Bibliography 243
Index 253
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Foreword
Understanding the transition from the highly civilized urban culture of the
Roman world at its height to that of the localized and heavily rural medi-
eval world is a problem that has attracted scholars for many centuries and
produced explanations of great variety. In spite of scholarship building
upon scholarship and increasingly refined techniques and tools available to
a range of interdisciplinary scholars, students of the transition continue to
fall into two camps, and this is especially true of those who deal with the
transition from Roman Gaul to medieval France. The question is not one
effusion; obviously there was a great deal of fusion involving pre-Roman
Celtic elements, Mediterranean immigrants of highly Romanized back-
ground, and Germanic invaders belonging to numerous tribal groupings.
In spite of much study the problem remains—how great was the Germanic
contribution to the new medieval civilization, how much was the Roman?
And there is still no general agreement.
Any further attempt to resolve the problem justifies a careful reexami-
nation of all the materials available for this study. The Prankish laws are
one of these materials, and a very important one. They have not been uti-
lized as much as one might expect because transmission of the laws has
presented some very difficult problems, problems which generations of
learned editors have not entirely overcome even today, although a good
text (in several versions) has now been produced. The first written Prank-
ish laws date from the late fifth or early sixth centuries—an extremely crit-
ical period in the breakup of the western Roman world and the establish-
ment of a number of Germanic kingdoms on former Roman soil. A body
of source material dating from this period from the Germanic point of view
is obviously of great importance.
By the opening of the sixth century, the western Roman Empire had
collapsed, although some independent remnants might still survive in Brit-
ain. But on the continent the Franks had established themselves in the
northern part of Gaul and would control most of the remainder of Gaul
before many years had passed, the Visigoths had Spain, the Ostrogoths
had Italy, the Burgundians (soon to be conquered by the Franks) had
viii Foreword
southeastern Gual, and the Vandals had Africa. The Ostrogothic experi-
ment, although promising much at the time, was destined not to last very
long and produced no significant collection of legal materials that has sur-
vived; we know very little either about the legal work of the Vandals in
Africa. But the Visigoths, the Burgundians, and the Franks all produced
legal materials of great importance, materials that undoubtedly were
heavily influenced by one another and were produced within a few years
of each other—all depending more or less heavily on the availability of
specialists in the Roman law who were willing to serve the new Germanic
heads of the administrative system in working out a satisfactory legal re-
gime in the new Visigothic, Burgundian, and Prankish kingdoms.
The Visigothic and Burgundian legal materials have been well studied
and have helped scholars to understand the more-or-less satisfactory rela-
tionship that developed in southwestern and southeastern Gaul and in
Spain between the older Gallo-Roman and Ibero-Roman populations, on
the one hand, and the more recently arrived Germans, on the other—a
relationship that produced a fusion of the two peoples and their cultures
by the end of the seventh century and produced a new medieval culture
there in which the Roman element was very strong.
But for northern Gaul the picture is different. A fusion between the
older Gallo-Roman population and the Germanic newcomers obviously
took place, but the end product was very different. The Roman influence
here was strong too—the language of north-central Gaul is derived from
Latin—but Germanic influence remained strong also: the German tongue
survived in the extreme northeastern part of Gaul, the law tended to re-
main customary rather than Roman derivative, and formal education vir-
tually disappeared.
The Prankish legislation has been recognized for many generations to
be the most Germanic of all the barbarian legislation except that of the
Anglo-Saxons. A study of it will hopefully provide some clues to the kind
of world produced in northern Gaul by the impact of the Gallo-Romans
and of Roman law on Prankish legal customs. This book is designed pri-
marily to introduce the significance of legal history to students of medieval
history.
It is my pleasure to acknowledge the aid of a number of persons and
institutions in the preparation of this translation and introduction. Of
greatest help was the work of a research assistant, Dallas Henderson,
whose employment at an early stage in this project was made possible by a
