Then, under the heading Additio Sapientium, Tit. II., the amount for the hand is stated to be ‘25 solidi et 5 denarii.’ And after the mention of the amounts for the several fingers are the words, ‘Hoc totum in triplo componantur.’ The payments for hand and eye are generally alike, and three times 25 solidi and 5 denarii = 80 solidi, i.e. half a wergeld of 160 solidi.
Immediately following these words Tit. III. begins with the statement that the foot entirely cut off is to be compounded for as the hand, i.e. by 53 solidi and 1 tremissis, being double the previous amount. The payment for the eye put out is ‘ter quadraginta solidi,’ i.e. 120 solidi. Then whilst in the title De Dolg the ear is valued at 12 solidi, in Tit. III. of the Additio it is valued at ‘ter duodecim solidi.’ Again, according to the title De Dolg, if both testicles were destroyed, the whole wergeld was to be paid: and in Title III. of the Additio the fine has become ter 53 solidi and 1 tremissis, three times the wergeld of the liber in Tit. I.
It is not needful to pursue the comparison further than to point out that Richthofen had some reason at any rate to form the opinion that in the additions to the law made, as he thinks, after A.D. 785 and probably about A.D. 802, the wergelds were trebled, as well as some of the payments for wounds; and that the inference from the Ripuarian laws that the Frisian wergeld was 160 solidi was therefore correct.[162]
So far Richthofen’s contention is, I think, a correct one.
But what was the reason of this trebling of the wergeld in the additions to the laws?
The wergeld of ‘liber’ was probably 160 solidi.
Was it that the ancient wergelds were originally one third of those of neighbouring tribes and trebled at some auspicious moment to make them correspond with others; or have we not rather to do with the results of that confusion in the currency which was caused by the endeavour to force into use the silver solidus of 12 pence as the equivalent of the gold solidus?
This conjecture standing by itself on the evidence of these laws alone would be too hazardous to build upon, and it is not necessary to consider it further in this place. The matter of chief importance is that, all things considered, there seems to be fairly sufficient evidence that the wergelds of Tit. I. represent the ancient wergelds divided by three, and that accordingly we may take the wergeld of the liber in the two Northern districts of Frisia to have been three gold marks or 160 Merovingian gold solidi,[163] as stated in the Ripuarian laws.
Division of wergeld among grades of kindred.
With regard to the distribution or division of the wergeld amongst the relations of the person slain, the laws mention only the custom of the Middle districts, according to which two thirds of the wergeld went to the heir of the slain and one third ‘ad propinquos proximos.’ They give no information as to how the ‘propinqui proximi’ divided their third amongst themselves, or to what grade of kinship this class of relations extended.