Consistently with this, the triple payment for killing a woman between childbearing and 40, as also in the Salic Law, was 600 solidi, whilst the wergeld of the ‘femina regia’ or ‘ecclesiastica’ was only 300 solidi.
There are apparently hardly any indications as to how or to whom the wergelds were to be paid. There is only one reference to the parentes, and that is not connected with the wergelds. In Tit. LXXXV. it is stated that he who shall disinter a corpse and rob it shall pay 200 solidi and be ‘expelled till he shall satisfy the parentes.’
The murderer alone seems to be responsible, unless indeed the few words added to the clauses imposing the triple wergeld of 600 solidi upon the murderer of a woman may be taken to be of general application. The words are these:—
‘If the murderer shall be poor, so that he cannot pay at once, then let him pay per tres decessiones filiorum.’
Has it really come to this, that since the Edict of Childeric II. came into force the parentes are released, and the descendants of the murderer, for three generations, are to be in slavery till the wergeld is paid? It may be so, for the penalty in default of payment of the wergeld probably included his own slavery, which involved with it that of his descendants.
The fisc gradually takes the place of the kindred.
The ancient tribal tradition that within the family there could be no feud or wergeld, but exile only, was still apparently in force. In Title LXIX. there is a clause which enacts that if any one shall slay one next in kin (‘proximus sanguinis’) he shall suffer exile and all his goods shall go to the fisc. This exile of the slayer of a near kinsman and forfeiture of his goods to the fisc seems to be almost the only distinct important survival of tribal feeling, apparently neither wergeld nor the death of the slayer being admitted. But in this case the fisc was, as usual, the gainer. Parricide under any system of criminal law would be a capital crime. The pertinacity with which the custom that, being a crime within the kindred, there could be no feud and therefore no wergeld, was adhered to in the midst of manifold changes in circumstances, feeling, and law, is very remarkable.
There is not much else in the Ripuarian laws throwing light upon tribal customs as regards the solidarity of the kindred. But there is a good deal of interesting information upon the important subject of the treatment of strangers in blood.
Distinction between persons living under Salic law and those living under Roman law who were treated as strangers in blood.
We have seen that in the Lex Salica the definition of the ingenuus with a wergeld of 200 solidi was the Francus or barbarus living under Salic law. The ‘barbarus’ who lived under Salic law was no longer a stranger; he had in fact become a Frank. As we should say, he had been naturalised. Hence there was no inconsistency in the apparent occasional indiscriminate use of the words ‘Francus’ and ‘ingenuus.’ They meant the same thing. But there is nothing to show that the ordinary Gallo-Roman was included under the term ‘barbarus who lived under Salic law.’ On the other hand, we find him living under the Roman law.