Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

edicts and judgements 267
decrees only begin nearly twenty years after Childebert’s accession – that is,
after the death of Guntram in 593, when Childebert had succeeded his
uncle as the dominant ruler of the Franks. 33 From then until his own death
in 596, every spring saw legislation which is not only precisely dated but situated
in a place within Childebert’s kingdom: 594 at Andernach, 595 at
Maastricht and 596 at Cologne. Childebert also makes it clear both that he
has discussed the issues with his nobles and that he himself is promulgating
the outcome. So the second decree at Andernach in 594 begins with an
awkward combination of the two elements, noble counsel and royal promulgation:
Subsequently, however, it is agreed with our leudes: we have decreed . . .
The same pattern is also attested among the Burgundians. 34
It may even be behind full-scale codes. Rothari’s Edict was promulgated
in 643, and the elaborate dating clause which opens the text places the
promulgation at the royal palace in Pavia. 35 The year 643 saw a major
Lombard campaign which resulted in the conquest of Liguria, hitherto a
Roman province; 36 and it has very plausibly been suggested that Rothari’s
great legislative achievement, with its reminder of the divinely providential
entry into Italy seventy-six years before, was intended as an assertion of
Lombard identity. This was coupled with royal concern for the poorer
element among the Lombards, before the campaign got under way. 37 What
may have mattered most in 643 was the way in which Rothari’s Edict was
set before the Lombard army as an expression of their solidarity as a
people, their identification with their kings and their claims to rule in Italy.
Even when it came to the practical effectiveness of individual rules of law,
royal legislation was likely to be sensitive to the political context: in the end,
it rested on the combined strength exerted by the authority of the king and
the consensus of his great men.
It is also possible to grasp how contemporaries understood the internal
structure of individual decrees. Title 57 of the Frankish Pactus Legis Salicae
is devoted to the rachinburgii, the sworn panel of men required to declare
the Salic law in judgement. They are depicted as discussing the causa which
divides the parties; and the Pactus is concerned lest the rachinburgii should
refuse to declare the law. They may, therefore, be solemnly requested by a
disputant ‘that you declare the law according to the Salic law’. The particular
verdict should thus be according to the law as a whole. This suggests
33 For this reason the judgement of Eckhardt (1954) 139, that the Decretio Childeberti was solely a territorial
law for Austrasia, is open to question.
34 Constitutiones Extravagantes, xxi, ed. de Salis, Leg. Burg. 119. 35 Beyerle (1962) 16.
36 Paul. Diac. Hist. Lang. iv.45, ed. L. Bethmann and G. Waitz, MGH, Scriptores rerum Langobardicarum
et Italicarum, saec. VI–IX (Hanover 1878), p. 135. On the date of the campaign, see Bognetti (1966–8c)
ii.313 n. 37 Bognetti (1966–8b).
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