Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

the evolution of frankish written law 273
this is true, the rule has no specifically Christian content – nothing which
might offend the most fervent pagan. It may perhaps be taken as suggesting
the influence on the text of a Christian Roman, who applied Exodus’
rule about one ox killing another to the situation when one slave kills
another, but it does not weaken the argument derived from the total
absence from the A Recension of any Christian content, such as we find
even in Æthelberht’s Law.
The third argument stems from Title 47. The issue is the procedure to
be followed when one person claims to recognize his property in the possession
of another, who may, of course, have bought it, or received it as a
gift, in good faith. The parties are to fix a date at which all those involved
in any relevant exchange of the property in question may come together.
If the parties live within limits defined by the forest known as the
Carbonaria (near Brussels) and the Loire, the meeting is to occur after forty
nights; if one party lives beyond those limits, the meeting is postponed so
that it occurs after eighty nights. 59
This text has been read in two quite different ways. On the one hand, it
is argued that only after Clovis’ defeat of Alaric in 507 and the subsequent
conquest of Aquitaine would Franks live beyond the Loire; hence the usual
date for the Salic Law of 507 to 511. 60 On the other hand, it is also pointed
out that those boundaries were crucial for Clovis before his defeat of Alaric
and before, at some time after 507, he took over the kingdom of Sigibert
the Lame, centred at Cologne. 61 At that stage, the silva Carbonaria separated
Clovis’ Salian kingdom from Sigibert’s eastern domain, which included
most at least of the other Frankish peoples, the Chamavi, Bructeri and
Ampsivarii. Moreover, the presence of Franks beyond the Loire before 507
is not impossible: they had been active in the Loire valley for fifty years
before 507 and had even briefly taken Bordeaux in 498. 62 Nevertheless, it
is difficult to reconcile the numismatic evidence as interpreted by Grierson
and Blackburn with Title 47; if the former is held to rule out a date after c.
450, it may be necessary to ask whether Title 47’s reference to the Loire may
not be a later insertion.
The difficulties over the date of the Salic Law arise in part from uncertainty
about its character. Thus Ewig is inclined to date it between Clovis’
destruction of the other Salian kings – Ragnachar, Rignomer and Chararic
– and his taking of power over the Rhineland Franks. 63 For him this
explains why it is a law for all the Salians but not for the other Frankish
59 PLS 47.1, 3. 60 Eckhardt (1954) 202–3. 61 Wood, Merovingian Kingdoms 112.
62 Greg. Tur. Hist. ii.18–19; Continuatio Havniensis Prosperi s.a. 498, ed. Mommsen, Chronica Minora
i.331: Ann. xiiii ‘Alarici Franci Burdigalem obtinuerunt et a potestate Gothorum in possessionem sui
redegerunt capto Suatrio Gothorum duce.’
63 Ewig (1988) 30; this involves a major revision to Gregory of Tours’ chronology, since he placed
the acquisition of Sigibert the Lame’s kingdom east of the Carbonaria before the conquest of the Salian
kings.
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