The system of wergelds was extended to the advantage of ultimately both official and clerical hierarchies, and even from the Franks themselves to strangers and to the Gallo-Roman population amongst whom they dwelt. And the whole character and system of the ‘Lex Salica’ was so much like a statement of crimes and the composition to be paid for them that it lent itself very easily to the interest of the fisc.
The Lex allowed a tribesman to break himself away from his kindred. And the fisc gained by it.
In the sixty-five titles themselves there is direct evidence that tribal tradition and the solidarity of the kindred had once existed, and that in spite of the edict the fisc was interested in their maintenance. Thus by Tit. LX., De eum qui se de parentilla tollere vult, a door was thrown wide open for the Salic tribesman to escape from the obligations of kindred. To secure this object he is to go to the mallus with three branches of alder, and break them over his head, and throw them on four sides in the mallus, and declare that he withdraws from the oath, and the inheritance, and everything belonging to the parentilla, so that thereafter, if any of his parentes either is killed or shall die, no part either of the inheritance or of the composition shall pertain to him, but all go to the fisc. If we take this clause strictly it implies and sanctions the general right of a kinsman of a slain person to share in his wergeld. The share of the kinsman, who under this clause frees himself from the liability to pay, and gives up his right to receive any portion of the wergeld of a relative, does not lapse altogether, but is apparently kept alive for the fisc.
This clause is not perhaps inconsistent with the edict which left the receipt of wergeld still possible, though payment by the slayer’s kindred was optional. And so long as the occasional receipt of wergeld was still possible, rules for its division might reasonably remain in the Lex.
Tit. LXII., ‘De compositione homicidii.’
The same may perhaps be said of other clauses included in the original sixty-five. Tit. LXII., De compositione homicidii, is the one which deals with the division of the wergeld by its recipients, i.e. the kindred of the person slain. According to the text of Hessels, Cod. I., it is as follows:—
Si cujuscumque pater occisus fuerit medietatem compositionis filii collegant, et aliam medietatem parentes quae proximiores sunt tam de patre quam de matre inter se dividant.
If any one’s father be killed, the sons are to take collectively one half of the composition, and the other half is to be divided between the parentes who are proximiores, both of the paternal and maternal kindreds.
Quod si de nulla paterna seu materna nullus parens non fuerit, illa portio in fisco collegatur.
But if there be parentes on neither side,[99] paternal or maternal, then that portion (i.e. the second half) is to go to the fisc.