Lastly, there are clauses in the same Liber secundus which declare the value of the solidus in equation with cattle.
LXXX. Summus bovus 5 tremisses valet. Medianus 4 tremisses valet. Minor quod appreciatus fuerit.
LXXVII. Illa mellissima vacca 4 tremisses liceat adpreciare. Illa alia sequenteriana solidum 1.
These clauses show that the solidi in which the wergelds were paid were gold solidi of three tremisses.
In the Ripuarian laws the ox was equated with 2 gold solidi, i.e. 6 tremisses, so that we learned from the equation that the wergeld of the Ripuarian liber, 200 solidi, was really a wergeld of 100 oxen. But the above equations show that under Alamannic law the wergeld of the liber was not so.
In the Alamannic laws the best ox was valued only at five tremisses instead of six, so that the wergeld of 200 solidi of the medius Alamannus was really a wergeld of 120 oxen; and the 160 solidi of the wergeld of the baro de mino flidis of the ‘Pactus,’ or simple ‘liber’ of the Lex Hlotharii, was a wergeld of 96 oxen or 120 Alamannic ‘sweetest cows.’
Any one who has seen the magnificent fawn-coloured oxen by which waggons are still drawn in the streets of St. Gall will appreciate what the ‘summus bovus’ of the Alamannic region may have been. Why it should have been worth in gold less than the oxen of other lands does not appear.
