THE CAMBRIDGE MEDIEVAL HISTORY I 161
The Manners and Characteristics of the Franks
10-16. The Manners and Characteristics of the Franks
Historians have devoted much discussion to the question whether this official was appointed by the king or elected by the freemen of the hundred. At the court of the hundred all the freemen had a right to be present, but only a few of them took part in the proceedings — some of them would be nominated for this duty on one occasion, some on another. In their capacity as assistants to the centenarius at the mal the freemen were designated rachineburgi. In order to make a sentence valid it was required that seven rachineburgi should pronounce judgment. A plaintiff had the right to summon seven of them to give judgment upon his suit. If they refused, they had to pay a fine of three sols. If they persisted in their refusal, and did not undertake to pay the three sols before sunset, they incurred a fine of fifteen sols.
Every man's life was rated at a certain value; this was his price, the wergeld. The wergeld of a Salian Frank was 200 sols; that of a Roman 100 sols. If a Salian Frank had killed another Salian, or a Roman, without aggravating circumstances, the Court sentenced him to pay the price of the victim, the 200 or 100 sols. The compositio in this case is exactly equivalent to the wergeld; if, however, he had only wounded his victim he paid, according to the severity of the injury, a lower sum proportionate to the wergeld. If, however, the murder has taken place in particularly atrocious circumstances, if the murderer has endeavoured to conceal the corpse, if he has been accompanied by an armed band, or if the assassination has been unprovoked, the compositio may be three times, six times, nine times, the wergeld. Of this compositio, two-thirds were paid to the relatives of the victim; this was the faida and bought off the right of private vengeance; the other third was paid to the State or to the king: it was called fretus or fredum from the German word for peace, Friede, and was a compensation for the breach of the public peace of which the king is the guardian. Thus a very lofty principle was embodied in this penalty.
The Salic Law is mainly a tariff of the fines which must be paid for various crimes and offences. The State thus endeavoured to substitute the judicial sentences of the courts for private vengeance, part of the compensation being paid to the victim or his family to induce them to renounce this right. But we may safely conjecture that the triumph of law over inveterate custom was not immediate. It was long before families were willing to leave to the judgment of the courts serious crimes which had been committed against them, such as homicides and adulteries; they flew to arms and made war upon the guilty person and his family. The forming in this way of armed bands was very detrimental to public order.
The crimes mentioned most frequently in the Salic Law give us some grounds on which to form an idea of the manners and characteristics of the Franks. These Franks would seem to have been much given to bad language, for the Law mentions a great variety of terms of abuse. It is forbidden to call one's adversary a fox or a hare, or to reproach him with having flung away his shield; it is forbidden to call a woman meretrix, or to say that she had joined the witches at their revels. Warriors who are so easily enraged readily pass to violence and murder. Every form of homicide is mentioned in the Salic Law.
The roads are not safe, and are often infested by armed bands. In addition to murder, theft is very often mentioned by the code — theft of fruits, of hay, of cattle-bells, of horse-clogs, of animals, of river-boats, of slaves, and even of freemen. All these thefts are punished with severity and are held by all to be base and shameful crimes. But there is a punishment of special severity for robbing a corpse which has been buried. The guilty person is outlawed, and is to be treated like a wild beast.
The civilisation of these Franks is primitive; they are, above all else, warriors. As to their appearance, they brought their fair hair forward from the top of the head, leaving the back of the neck bare. On their faces they generally wore no hair but the moustache. They wore close-fitting garments, fastened with brooches, and bound in at the waist by a leather belt which was covered with bands of enamelled iron and clasped by an ornamental buckle. From this belt hung the long sword, the hanger or scramasax, and various articles of the toilet, such as scissors and combs made of bone. From it too was hung the single-bladed axe, the favourite weapon of the Franks, known as the francisca, which they used both at close quarters and by hurling it at their enemies from a distance. They were also armed with a long lance or spear (Lat. framea) formed of an iron blade at the end of a long wooden shaft. For defence they carried a large shield, made of wood or wattles covered with skins, the centre of which was formed by a convex plate of metal, the boss (umbo), fastened by iron rods to the body of the shield.
They were fond of jewellery, wearing gold finger-rings and armlets, and collars formed of beads of amber or glass or paste inlaid with colour. They were buried with their arms and ornaments, and many Frankish cemeteries have been explored in which the dead were found fully armed, as if prepared for a great military review. The Franks were universally distinguished for courage. As Sidonius Apollinaris wrote of them: “from their youth up war is their passion. If they are crushed by weight of numbers, or through being taken at a disadvantage, death may overwhelm them, but not fear.”
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