As for these Lombard kings, they arose on this wise. After Alboin’s death the Lombards were for ten years under dukes, and evil times came, every man doing what was right in his own eyes; enlarging their frontier by killing the Roman landholders, and making the survivors give them up a portion of their lands, as Odoacer first, and the Ostrogoths next, had done. At last, tired of lawlessness, dissension and weakness, and seemingly dreading an invasion from Childebert, king of the Franks, they chose a king, Autharis the son of Cleph, and called him Flavius, by which Roman title the Lombard kings were afterwards known. Moreover, they agreed to give him (I conclude only once for all) the half of all their substance, to support the kingdom. There were certain tributes afterwards paid into the king’s treasury every three years; and certain fines, and also certain portions of the property of those who died without direct heirs, seem to have made up the revenue. Whereon, Paul says, perfect peace and justice followed.
Now for the laws, which were reduced into writing about sixty years afterwards. The first thing that you will remark about these laws, is that duel, wager of battle under shield, ‘diremptio causæ per pugnam sub uno scuto,’ is the earliest form of settling a lawsuit. If you cannot agree, fight it out fairly, either by yourself or per campionem, a champion or kemper man, and God defend the right. Then follows ‘faida,’ blood-feud, from generation to generation. To stop which a man is allowed to purge himself by oath; his own and that of certain neighbours, twelve in general, who will swear their belief in his innocence. This was common to the northern nations, and was the origin of our trial by jury. If guilty, the offender has to pay the weregeld, or legal price, set upon the injury he has inflicted. When the composition is paid, there is an end of the feud; if after taking the composition the plaintiff avenges himself, he has to pay it back. Hence our system of fines.
This method of composition by fines runs through all the Teutonic laws; and makes the punishment of death, at least among freemen, very rare.
Punishments by stripes, by imprisonment, or by cruel or degrading methods, there are none. The person of a freeman is sacred, ‘Vincire et verberare nefas,’ as Tacitus said of these Germans 600 years before.
The offences absolutely punishable by death seem to be, treason against the king’s life; cowardice in battle; concealment of robbers; mutinies and attempts to escape out of the realm; and therefore (under the then military organization) to escape from the duty of every freeman, to bear arms in defence of the land.
More than a hundred of these laws define the different fines, or ‘weregelds,’ by which each offence is to be compounded for, from 900 solidi aurei, gold pieces, for a murder, downwards to the smallest breach of the peace. Each limb has its special price. For the loss of an eye, half the price of the whole man is to be paid. A front tooth is worth 16s., solidi aurei; their loss being a disfigurement; but a back tooth is worth only 8s. A slave’s tooth, on the other hand, is worth but 4s.; and in every case, the weregeld of a slave is much less than that of a freeman.
The sacredness of the household, and the strong sense of the individual rights of property, are to be remarked. One found in a ‘court,’ courtledge (or homestead), by night (as we say in old English), may be killed. You know, I dare say, that in many Teutonic and Scandinavian nations the principle that a man’s house is his castle was so strongly held that men were not allowed to enter a condemned man’s house to carry him off to execution; but if he would not come out, could only burn the house over his head. Shooting, or throwing a lance into any man’s homestead, costs 20s. ‘Oberos,’ or ‘curtis ruptura,’ that is, making violent entry into a man’s homestead, costs 20s. also. Nay, merely to fetch your own goods out of another man’s house secretly, and without asking leave, was likewise punished as oberos.
So of personal honour. ‘Schelte’ or insult, for instance, to call a man arga, i.e. a lazy loon, is a serious offence. If the defendant will confess that he said it in a passion, and will take oath that he never knew the plaintiff to be arga, he must still pay 12s.; but if he will stand to his word, then he must fight it out by duel, sub uno scuto.
The person, for the same reason, was sacred. If a man had lain in wait for a freeman, ‘cum virtute et solatio,’ with valour and comfort, i.e. with armed men to back him, and had found him standing or walking simply, and had shamefully held him, or ‘battiderit,’ committed assault and battery on him, he must pay half the man’s weregeld; the ‘turpiter et ridiculum’ being considered for a freeman as half as bad as death. Here you find in private life, as well as in public, the vincire et verberare nefas.
If, again, one had a mind to lose 80 shillings of gold, he need but to commit the offence of ‘meerworphin,’ a word which will puzzle you somewhat, till you find it to signify ‘mare warping,’ to warp, or throw one’s neighbour off his mare or horse.