Tit. XLI. fixes the amount of the wergeld of the typical freeman who is described as ‘the Frank or the barbarian man who lives under the Lex Salica.’
The wergeld of the freeman living under Salic law 200 solidi.
The amount, as throughout the Lex are all the payments, is stated in so many denarii and so many solidi—8,000 denarii, i.e. 200 solidi. And that the Frank or barbarian living under the Lex Salica was the typical freeman is shown by the title De debilitatibus,[106] which fixes the payment for the destruction of an eye, hand, or foot at 100 solidi. Half the wergeld is the highest payment for eye, hand, and foot ever exacted by the Continental laws, and 100 solidi certainly cannot apply to any grade of persons with a lower wergeld than 200 solidi.
Tit. XLI. is as follows:—
Si quis ingenuo franco aut barbarum, qui legem Salega vivit, occiderit, cui fuerit adprobatum viii. M. den. qui fac. sol. cc. culp. jud.
If any one shall kill a freeman—a Frank or barbarian man who lives under the Lex Salica—let him whose guilt is proved be judged to be liable for viii. M. denarii, which make cc. solidi.
As this clause probably dates before the issue of Merovingian solidi of diminished weight, the 200 solidi of the wergeld may be taken to have been at the date of the law 200 gold solidi of Imperial standard.
So that the wergeld of the Frank or the free ‘barbarus living under the Lex Salica’ originally, when paid in gold solidi, was neither more nor less than the normal wergeld of a heavy gold mina.
Officials had a triple wergeld.
We learn from clause 2 of the same title that if the homicide was aggravated by concealment of the corpse the composition was increased to 24,000 denarii or 600 solidi, and that the wergeld of a person ‘in truste dominica’ was again 600 solidi. The Royal Official thus, as in several other laws, had a triple wergeld.