Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

278 10. law in the western kingdoms
sixth or the eighth century presiding over a judicial assembly with a copy
of Lex Salica under his arm’. 85 Yet this is not to be confused with the question
whether, when kings (or wise men) promulgated law orally, such promulgation
had any effect on the court. The content of a lawbook might
influence court proceedings even when the book itself did not.
v. from north-west europe to the mediterranean
As will be clear already, when we leave northern Gaul for the south we enter
a very different legal world. It is worth, however, making a detour westwards
to the Loire valley and to the Breton frontier. The first stop on this
journey will be the region west and south of Paris, including Chartres,
Châteaudun, Orleans and Blois, the setting of one of Gregory of Tours’
tales of violence. Gregory’s story may be compared with the Pactus pro
Tenore Pacis promulgated by two sons of Clovis, Childebert I and Chlothar
I, a text which was added, as we have seen, to Lex Salica. 86 The Pactus consists
of four sections: first there are two brief introductory sentences, followed
by an edict of Childebert; then comes Chlothar’s edict, and, finally,
a concluding statement, from both kings, permitting, in particular, pursuit
of thieves across the boundary between their regna. The concluding section
of the Pactus assumes an organized enforcement of the law based upon the
trustis, the king’s comitatus, and upon the centena, the hundred. 87 Chlothar’s
edict expected these centenae to prevent collusion between thieves and those
charged with the night-watch. His scheme was that the centena to which the
victim of the theft belonged had the responsibility of securing restitution.
The victim’s centena might itself find the stolen property by following tracks
(livestock was presumably intended, especially perhaps cattle-rustling); it
could also follow the tracks across the boundaries of its own territory into
that of another centena, whereupon it would give formal notice to the other
centena of what it had found and of the consequent duty of the other centena
to find the stolen goods. This second centena might subsequently do the
same to a third. There is, therefore, a framework of law-enforcement and
clear provisions to determine where responsibility lay.
It is odd that Childebert’s edict contains nothing as remarkable as the
provisions in the name of his younger brother, even though Childebert’s
role as chief among the Merovingian kings of his generation seems so clear
in the legislation of the church councils. There is a clear reference to a
canon of the first council of Orleans (which itself refers back to the
Theodosian Code), yet even this is part of Chlothar’s edict. 88 The most
interesting rule in Childebert’s section of the text is one declaring that the
85 In a letter to H. Nehlsen quoted in Nehlsen (1977) 451. 86 PLS 79–93 (pp. 250–2).
87 For a discussion of the origins of the centena and Chlothar’s use of it, see Murray (1988) esp. 75–93.
88 PLS 90.1; council of Orleans, 511,c.1 (ed. de Clercq, Concilia Galliae,pp.4–5).
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