Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

282 10. law in the western kingdoms
of those who live with God, but of the vengeance of men who could not
in honour be satisfied until they had found the killer of their kinsman.
vi. barbarian and roman law
The combination in the Formulae Andegavenses of elements from different
sources raises, in a usefully sharp form, the old question of the relationship
between barbarian and Roman laws. In Tours Gregory, the bishop, paid
many of the church’s solidi to heal a blood-feud, in the context of desperate
efforts within and without the court, by judges and by the bishop himself,
to make peace. 98 For the sake of the peace of the civitas, therefore, the
bishop became the friend of the killer and paid wergild on his behalf.
Gregory in the role of go-between was, although a bishop of proud senatorial
descent, working in a legal world closer in some respects to that of Lex
Salica than to the Theodosian Code. Romans feuded among themselves; so
did Jews; Romans feuded with Saxons. 99 Yet the will of Remigius, bishop of
Rheims, who died c. 532, reveals something different: the document itself
rests directly on a particular provision in the Theodosian Code. 100 Similarly,
the bishops assembled by order of Clovis at Orleans in 511 appealed in their
first canon to secular law as well as to the authority of earlier councils, but
the secular law to which they appealed was the Theodosian Code. 101 In the
early sixth century the Theodosian Code was in use throughout Gaul. 102
There is a scatter of general pronouncements on the legal relationship
of barbarian to Roman, the upshot of which is that cases between Romans
were settled by Roman law, while cases between barbarians or between barbarian
and Roman were settled by barbarian law. 103 More complex,
however, is the rule – plainly a royal constitutio – in Lex Ribuaria: 104
We also decree the following, that Franks, Burgundians, Alamans or of whatever
nation someone is who has taken up residence within the Ribuarian province and
is impleaded at law, he should give answer according to the law of the place (locus)
where he was born.
This passage explains why the common inclusion in a single manuscript of
different national laws might be useful, but it also raises problems, first by its
98 Greg. Tur. Hist. vii.47; Wallace-Hadrill (1962); James (1983).
99 Greg. Tur. Hist. iii.33, vi.17, vii.3.
100 Testamentum Remigii ed. B. Krusch, MGH SRM iii.336–47 and CCSL 117/1, 473–9, appeals to
C.Th. iv.4.7; Jones, Grierson and Crook (1957); for the date of Remigius’ death see PLRE ii.938; Wood
(1993). 101 Concilia Galliae ed. de Clercq, p. 4.
102 The legal knowledge of the ex-slave Andarchius, legis Theodosianae libris eruditus, helped to recommend
him to King Sigibert: Greg. Tur. Hist. iv.46.
103 Lib. Const. Pref. 3, 8;cf.22 and 55, Constitutiones Extravagantes 20 (ed. de Salis, Leg. Burg. 31, 32, 90,
119); Preceptio of Chlothar II, c. 4: ‘Inter Romanus negutia causarum romanis legebus praecepemus terminari’:
Capitularia Regum Francorum ed. Boretius, i.1, MGH, Leg. ii (Hanover, 1881) i.19.
104 Lex Ribuaria 35.3, ed. Beyerle and Buchner, MGH, Leg. i, iii.2 (Hanover, 1954), p. 87.
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