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the evolution of frankish written law 277
king and law is evidently variable, strong in the case of such edicts as those
of Chilperic I or Childebert II, more distant in most of Lex Salica itself.
Moreover, the king could show his authority in other ways than by insisting
on his role as promulgator of the law. The rachinburgii are said to proclaim
the law; 80 but some cases will be heard ‘before the king (theuda) or the
thunginus’. 81 In Francia, then, putting law into writing did not entail making
it overtly royal; moreover, the Pactus Legis Salicae is notably less royal than
either the early English laws to the north or Burgundian law to the south.
Since the numismatic evidence now argues for a very early date, it is
tempting to date Lex Salica before Clovis’ destruction of the other Salian
kings, such as Ragnachar of Cambrai. With divided kingship, no one king
controls the law, although all support it and preside over legal processes.
When, later, there is overtly royal legislation, it seems to come, as in the case
of Childebert II, when a single king is clearly dominant or two kings made
a treaty. Written law in Francia was still presumably the outcome of a collaboration
between barbarian and Roman, but it also reflected the authority
of men recognized for their knowledge of the law. 82 Their expertise in
Salic law, only partly embodied in the text of Lex Salica, was mainly couched
in rules of the dōm style; the king, perhaps Childeric using an authority
exalted over other kings of the Salian Franks by his acceptance as ruler of
Belgica Secunda, seems at most to have taken over a body of material
assembled by experts, added some further decrees, and ordered it to be put
into writing in a form imitating the Theodosian Code. But it is also possible
that the absence of any parade of authority by a single king is because there
were at the time several Salian kings, no one of whom had the power to
promulgate law for all the Salians.
The question whether the Salic Law was promulgated by a king as a
written text should not be confused with a quite separate question, whether
kings played a major role in legal processes. Gregory of Tours provides
several examples both of people who were prepared to travel considerable
distances to seek royal justice and of local cases which were remitted to the
king. 83 Remigius of Rheims emphasized, in very Roman terms, the judicial
role expected of the king. 84 One cannot avoid the recently much-discussed
question whether written law had any role in the Frankish court – whether,
to use Peter Classen’s question, ‘one should imagine a Frankish judge of the
80 PLS 57.
81 The thunginus is likely to be the Frankish counterpart to the ge�ungen wita of Ine, c. 6.2, pace Wenskus
(1964), who would see him as a minor king; he is coupled with the centenarius in 44.1, 46.1, 4, but with
the theoda in 46.6 (reading ante theuda rather than anttheoda, which is only supported among the A and C
MSS by A2’s anteuda, itself a mechanical error, ante(te)uda). Theuda for the expected theudan is probably
a West Frankish form influenced by the loss of final –n in Latin.
82 Even in Burgundy Syagrius talked law with the curua senectus, not with the king: Sid. Ap. Ep. v.5.
83 Greg. Tur. Hist. vi.11, 37; vii.232; ix.19.
84 Epist. Austras. ed. Gundlach, no. 1 (MGH, Epistolae Merowingici et Karolini Aevi,pp.112–13).
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