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Early Germanic law was the form of law followed by the early Germanic peoples. It was an important element of early Germanic culture. Several Latin law codes of the Germanic peoples written in the Early Middle Ages after the Fall of the Western Roman Empire (also known as leges barbarorum "laws of the barbarians") survive, dating to between the 5th and 9th centuries. They are influenced by Roman law, canon law, and earlier tribal customs. Central and West European Germanic law differed from North Germanic law. Germanic law was codified in writing under the influence of Roman law; previously it was held in the memory of designated individuals who acted as judges in confrontations and meted out justice according to customary rote, based on careful memorization of precedent. Among the Franks they were called rachimburgs. "Living libraries, they were law incarnate, unpredictable and terrifying." Power, whose origins were at once said to be magical, divine, and military, was, according to Michel Rouche, exercised jointly by the "throne-worthy" elected king and his free warrior companions. Oral law sufficed as long as the warband was not settled in one place. Germanic law made no provisions for the public welfare, the res publica of Romans. The language of all these continental codes was Latin; the only known codes drawn up in any Germanic language were the Anglo-Saxon laws, beginning with the Laws of Æthelberht (7th century). In the 13th century customary Saxon law was codified in the vernacular as the Sachsenspiegel. All these laws may be described in general as codes of governmental procedure and tariffs of compositions. They all present somewhat similar features with Salic law, the best-known example, but often differ from it in the date of compilation, the amounts of fines, the number and nature of the crimes, the number, rank, duties and titles of the officers, etc. In Germanic Europe in the Early Middle Ages, every man was tried according to the laws of his own ethnicity, whether Roman, Salian or Ripuarian Frank, Frisian, Burgundian, Visigoth, Bavarian etc. A number of separate codes were drawn up specifically to deal with cases between ethnic Romans. These codes differed from the normal ones that covered cases between Germanic peoples, or between Germanic people and Romans. The most notable of these are the Lex Romana Visigothorum or Breviary of Alaric (506), the Lex Romana Curiensis and the Lex Romana Burgundionum.
References
- "In lighter transgressions too the penalty is measured by the fault, and the delinquents upon conviction are condemned to pay a certain number of horses or cattle. Part of this mulct accrues to the King or the community, part to him whose wrongs are vindicated, or to his next kindred." (trans. Gordon)
- ignavos et imbelles at corpore infames. Gordon translates corpore infames as "unnatural prostitutes", another interpretation is "corporal infamation" (sodomy). Thus Tacitus may refer to rape, even though scholars have speculated that "corporal infamation" could refer to the catholic view of male homosexuality. See David F. Greenberg, The construction of homosexuality, p. 242 f. Consequently some scholars have speculated that the later Germanic concept of Old Norse argr, Langobardic arga, may combine the meanings "effeminate, cowardly, homosexual", see Jaan Puhvel, 'Who were the Hittite hurkilas pesnes?' in: A. Etter (eds.), O-o-pe-ro-si (FS Risch), Walter de Gruyter, 1986, p.154.
- "In the assembly it is allowed to present accusations, and to prosecute capital offences. Punishments vary according to the quality of the crime. Traitors and deserters they hang upon trees. Cowards, and sluggards, and unnatural prostitutes they smother in mud and bogs under an heap of hurdles. Such diversity in their executions has this view, that in punishing of glaring iniquities, it behoves likewise to display them to sight; but effeminacy and pollution must be buried and concealed." (trans. Gordon)
- "In the same assemblies are also chosen their chiefs or rulers, such as administer justice in their villages and boroughs. To each of these are assigned an hundred persons chosen from amongst the populace, to accompany and assist him, men who help him at once with their authority and their counsel." (trans. Gordon)
- e.g. Laws of Alfred, paragraph 6, "As if he fight and wound any one, let him be liable in his wer. If he fell a man to death, let him then be an outlaw, and let every one of those seize him with hearm who desire right. And if he so do that any one kill him, for that he resisted God's law or the kings, if that be proved true, let him lie uncompensated. "
- King, Law and Society in the Visigothic Kingdom (Cambridge University Press) 1972:36-37
- King, Law and Society in the Visigothic Kingdom (Cambridge University Press) 1972:38-39
- King, Law and Society in the Visigothic Kingdom (Cambridge University Press) 1972:39
- King, Law and Society in the Visigothic Kingdom (Cambridge University Press) 1972:44-45.
- King, Law and Society in the Visigothic Kingdom (Cambridge University Press) 1972:45-46
- King, Law and Society in the Visigothic Kingdom (Cambridge University Press) 1972:45
- King, Law and Society in the Visigothic Kingdom (Cambridge University Press) 1972:7
- Carr, Vandals to Visigoths (University of Michigan Press) 2002:36
- Chisholm 1911, p. 775.
- Carr, Vandals to Visigoths (University of Michigan Press) 2002:29
- Heather, The Visigoths from the Migration Period to the Seventh Century (Boydell Press) 1999:261
- Heather, The Visigoths from the Migration Period to the Seventh Century (Boydell Press) 1999:268
- Heather, The Visigoths from the Migration Period to the Seventh Century (Boydell Press) 1999:189
- Katherine Fischer Drew, The laws of the Salian Franks (Pactus legis Salicae), Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press (1991).
- Chisholm 1911, p. 776.
- Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law before the Time of Edward I vol. 1 p. 77.
- Chisholm 1911, pp. 775–776.
