CHAPTER VII.
TRIBAL CUSTOMS OF THE TRIBES CONQUERED BY CHARLEMAGNE.
I. THE EFFECT UPON WERGELDS OF THE NOVA MONETA.
The nova moneta of Charlemagne.
We have reached a point in our inquiry at which it becomes necessary to trouble the reader with further details concerning the changes in the Frankish currency, made by Charlemagne.
We are about to examine the customs as regards wergelds of those tribes which owed their laws, in the shape in which we have them, to the conquests of Charlemagne. The alterations in the currency, made literally whilst the laws were in course of construction, naturally left marks of confusion in the texts relating to wergelds, and we have to thread our way through them as best we can.
A change from gold to silver.
The change which we have to try to understand was in the first place a change from a gold to a silver currency—i.e. from the gold currency of Merovingian solidi and tremisses to the silver currency of Charlemagne’s nova moneta.
There had been a certain amount of silver coinage in circulation before, but the mass of the coinage had been hitherto gold, mostly in gold tremisses.
In all the Frankish laws hitherto examined the monetary unit was the gold solidus with its third—the tremissis. And the only question was whether the solidi and tremisses were of Imperial or of Merovingian standard—whether the solidus was the Merovingian solidus of 86·4 wheat-grains and the tremissis 28·8, or the Imperial solidus of 96 wheat-grains and the tremissis 32.
Merovingian kings first used and then imitated Imperial coin.