Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

edicts and judgements 263
within Austrasia, one division of one Frankish Regnum. 14 Æthelberht’s Law
became the first document of Kentish law, but the Cantware were the people
of Kent, the land of a former British civitas, the Cantii; for some purposes
they might be anxious to assert their kinship with the Jutes of the Isle of
Wight and Hampshire, but they called their law Kentish, not Jutish. 15 It is
approximately true that the further south we go in western Europe the more
the Laws are Roman in construction and language but ethnic in scope.
Although the effects of migration upon conceptions and formulations
of law might be considerable, there are cases in which they appear to have
had no effect whatsoever. In Ireland we have a legal tradition from outside
the empire: although some Irish had settled in Britain, their first written
laws did not come from the colonies but from the homeland. 16 In this case,
law was central to the conception of the Irish as one people, but in a quite
different way from the relationship of law and ethnic identity in southern
Europe, for the law transcended the limits of any one kingdom.
Admittedly, the sense of Irish national identity was probably strengthened
by the process of migration and conquest. Yet the results are seen in the
homeland rather than in Irish colonies in Britain.
For Rothari, however, the Lombards’ entry into Italy may have recalled
the people of Israel entering the Promised Land; as that migration saw the
foundation of the Law of Moses, so Rothari considered it his duty to
correct current legal practice just as all previous kings had done in their day,
including Alboin, who led the Lombards into Italy ‘by divine power’ just as
Rothari led them into Liguria in the very year in which he promulgated his
edict. 17 There was, then, great variety in the historical context of law in the
period between the fifth and the seventh century. Some laws may indeed
have undergone a major reshaping; yet the tradition was not necessarily
always broken, as illustrated by the law of one people, some of whom were
settled in the west and whose ancient traditions were, as we have seen, of
peculiar interest to migrating peoples: the Jews. 18
ii. edicts and judgements
In order to grasp the wide variety of law, it is helpful to extend the scope
of the enquiry into the seventh century; in that way one can include the earliest
European laws preserved in the vernacular, those from England and
Ireland. A broad classification of the material (leaving aside such texts as
14 Ewig (1976) i.462–71.
15 Bede, HE i.15; iv.16/14. For examples of Cantware in the laws, see Hlothhere and Eadric,
Prologue, 16; Wihtred, Prol. For Æthelberht’s Law see now Wormald (1995).
16 Cf. the preoccupation with Tara and Patrick shown by Córus Béscnai, ed. Binchy (1979) 527.14–28;
cf. Charles-Edwards and Kelly (1983) §§31–3 and Di Chetharslicht Athgabála, ed. Binchy (1979) 356.5–6.
Kelly (1988) surveys the contents of the early Irish laws. 17 Edictus Rothari Prologue.
18 Cf. Edictum Theodorici c. 143, ed. Baviera ii.708.
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