The Burgundian laws, so far as they belong to those first issued by Gundebald himself, fall between A.D. 501 and 516, and his reference to his ancestors in his preface shows that, while he may have remodelled the laws to meet altered circumstances, they were in part based upon traditional customs of his people.[94]
But his people were in a new position. Geographically they were sharing with a population still under Roman law the south-western part of the Helvetian Valley—i.e. between Neuchâtel and Geneva, and a good part of the old country of the Sequani on the Gallic side of the Jura.
The method of settlement.
They seem to have come into this district not altogether as conquerors, but in some sense as invited guests. According to Tit. 54 of the laws the newcomers, by the munificence of the Burgundian king and his ancestors, had had delegated to them individually, in a particular place, hospitalitas, which consisted of two thirds of the land and one third of the slaves of the hospes upon whom they were quartered, and by this clause in the laws they were forbidden to take more.[95] It is generally understood that this method more or less closely resembled the Roman method of quartering soldiers upon a district.
The Burgundians therefore came into a district with a mixed population of Romanised Gauls and Germans, already, after long residence and many vicissitudes, living and settled under Roman law, and regarded by the newcomers as Romans.
Thus two sets of laws became necessary, one for the Burgundian immigrants, the other for the old inhabitants who were to continue under Roman law.
Homicide under the ‘Lex Romana.’
Now under the Roman law there was no wergeld. And so in the Tit. II. of the Burgundian Lex Romana the slayer, whether a freeman or slave, if captured outside a church was condemned to death. If the homicide was in defence of life it was to be referred to judicial decision according to the Novellæ of Theodosius and Valentinian.
If the slayer had taken refuge in a church, quia de preciis occisionum nihil evidenter lex Romana constituit, the Burgundian lawgiver decreed that if a freeman by a freeman should be killed, and the slayer should flee to a church, he who confessed the homicide should be adjudged to be the slave of the heirs of the person killed, with half of his property, the other half to be left to the heirs of the slayer.
After this follows a clause, also of Burgundian origin, fixing the payment by a freeman who has killed a ‘servus’ and fled to a church. The price is to be paid to the lord of the servus on the following scale: