The words puer crintus have been shown by Kern[399] to refer not to the fact that the boy was one of twelve years who had been allowed to wear his hair long, but one who “by right of birth is allowed to wear his hair long in contradistinction to slaves and serfs.”[400]
To cut the hair of a boy or girl by force—and apparently against their will—meant a fine of forty-five sous. To kill a free girl before the age of twelve cost 200 sous, after the age of twelve, here given as the age of puberty, meant 600 sous. To kill a woman who was enceinte meant a wergeld of 700 sous; to strike a woman who was enceinte was 200 sous; if the child died, 600 sous, if the woman also died, 900 sous, and if the woman was in verbo regis, under the care of the king, 1200 sous.
The Salic law, which was put together by four chosen seigneurs and corrected by Clovis, Childbert, and Lothair, is also interesting in that it put a penalty on murders in such a way as to show that even the unborn child was given a value. A wergeld of 700 sous was declared against one who killed a woman who was enceinte, and to kill an unborn child entailed a wergeld of 200 sous.
The law of the Allemands, the people who have passed away but who have left the name by which the French designate the Germans, differed from the Salic law in an interesting way.
The tendency and underlying idea of the laws of the time is well shown in the law of the Angles which punished the murder of a noble girl non nubile with the same wergeld of 600 sous that it punished the murder of a noble woman who was no longer able to bear children. The murder of a woman who was capable of bearing children was punishable by a wergeld three times the size of this. But the fine for a young girl or non fecund woman of the plain people was only 160 sous.
The Burgundians in their law had no regulation on either infanticide or abortion. The Ripurian Francs declared strongly against both in a law that imposed a fine of 100 sous on “any one who killed a new-born child that had not been named.”
The code of the Visigoths which was arranged after the middle of the fifth century is the severest of all in its penalties as to abortion and those in any way responsible for it.
In the matter of exposed children the law went into details. Parents could not sell children, it states, nor put them in pawn.
“Whoever nourished a child that had been exposed, gained the value of a slave, which had to be paid by the parents of the exposed child when it was reclaimed by its parents. If the parents did not present themselves but they should be found out, they were forced to pay and might be sent into exile. If they did not have the means to pay, the one who had exposed the child became a slave in his place to the rescuer.
“If a slave expose a child unknown to the master and the master swear that he was ignorant of the act, the person who rescues and brings up the child can recover only one fourth of its value; but if the exposure has been with the master’s knowledge, the rescuer can recover the full value of the child.”[401]