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ear the end of the Roman Empire there was a tribe referred to as Burgundians. The Burgundians followed a set of laws and codes referred to as The Burgundian Code, these laws covered many topics from getting a divorce, kidnapping, murder, and maiming of other Freemen and Romans.
Most of these laws would require that the offender pay a certain price or fine to the victim or the victims family, and the higher up in the social class the victim was,the higher the fine would be as well.
These fines were referred to as wergeld. You would witness many freeman storing away stashes of solidi (revenue used at the time) to be able to pay off wergeld. Another main use of wergeld was to prevent family feuds from ensuing, why fight to the death over a dead horse when you can just pay for it? I consider the concept of wergeld interesting due to the fact of everything seemed to have a price and its place in society all the way from the maiming of an arm to the stubbing of a toe. This concept is also carried out today in a certain fashion by requiring certain offenders to pay bail to be released from holding.
Marc. "The Burgundian Code - Outline." Burgundians in the Mist:. N.p., 23 July 2010. Web. 07 Sept. 2016.
Duhaime, Lloyd. "Burgundian Code (500)." Duhaime.org. N.p., 13 Sept. 2008. Web. 07 Sept. 2016
Drew, K., The Burgundian Code (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1972)
.McKitterick, R. (editor), The New Cambridge Medieval History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
I can't help but wonder who the first person or persons to come up with this was, whether it was written in the law before people practiced it or if people practiced it before it went into law.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting that this was so ingrained into the culture during the middle ages that it even found its way into the literature of medieval Europe. There is more than one reference to wergild in Beowulf.
ReplyDeleteI think it is interesting that everyone had a price. This established the superiority of someone over other people. The more money you are worth, then the more powerful you are. I like how everyone actually saved up solidi, just in case they committed a crime. Lastly, I liked how you tied in this information to modern day, by including bail.
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