Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

from north-west europe to the mediterranean 281
they would be further north for centuries to come, but written in the
record. The Formulae were thus directly useful in a local context, for they
told the notary how he should write the documents that would then be
recorded in the Gesta. In a legal context, Angers remained the focus of
Anjou; there one would find both court and notary, and there would be the
record of past legal acts. The court, however, seems to have a large element
of communal self-help about it: it may be presided over by the abbot of the
monastery or by another important figure – perhaps this helps to explain
why Lex Salica uses the general term thunginus, ‘eminent man’, for a president
of the court. 92 Finally, even here, on the edge of Aquitaine, which
would in the seventh century emerge as Romania and a land of Roman law,
we meet rachinburgii. 93 Significantly, they appear in a document about homicide
and the threat of feud. Many of the formulae in the collection may be
as early as the reign of Childebert II; 94 this one is probably a somewhat later
addition and may be an instance of growing Frankish influence on the legal
practices of the Loire region.
In the neighbouring Tours, Gregory himself was involved in attempting
to settle a feud between natives of the Touraine; and, moreover, he acted
together with the count and the other iudices, the latter perhaps rachinburgii. 95
While, however, Gregory’s problem was to bring peace to a feud in which
everyone knew who the killers were, in the Angers document the homicide
was the much more serious secret killing – that is, murder. The person
accused of the offence in Angers is said to have denied it ‘absolutely and
with vigour’. Faced with uncertainty, the public court of Angers did not
resort to the ordeal, beloved of the Franks, 96 but to Gregory’s own favoured
answer to cruel uncertainty, the power of the holy dead conjoined with that
of his neighbours. The accused man was to swear an oath with twelve others
as compurgators that he was as innocent as he claimed. The formula for the
official notification of the oath prescribed the following declaration:
By this holy place and all the divine powers of patronage (patrocinia) of the saints
who rest here, inasmuch as the man . . . and his brothers . . . have accused me of
killing or asking to be killed on some occasion their kinsman . . ., I have not killed
him, nor have I asked anyone to kill him, nor was I in the know, nor was I ever a
consenting party to his death, and I owe nothing in respect of this claim, except
that I have undergone, in accordance with the laws, this appropriate oath, which
has been assigned to me in judgement.
The accusers were not always content to accept such oaths, 97 which may
explain why the formula seems to resonate with fear, not just of the powers
92 For the abbot, see Formulae Andegavenses ed. Zeumer, nos. 7, 10 etc; for the agens, apparently of the
church, nos. 11, 28; for the prepositus,no.24. 93 Formulae Andegavenses ed. Zeumer, no. 50.
94 Buchner (1953) 50. 95 Greg. Tur. Hist. vii.47. 96 Bartlett (1986) 4–5.
97 Greg. Tur. Hist. vii.23, where procedure corresponds closely to the Angers document, but the
accusers remain unconvinced; and v.32, where the father’s oath also fails to convince.
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