Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

family and friendship in the west 425
already established by the senatorial aristocracy of fifth- and sixth-century
Gaul. In other respects, too, the Germanic family shared much with its
Roman counterparts. At the highest of social levels Germanic and Roman
families even intermarried, despite imperial legislation to the contrary. 82 The
starting-point for an investigation of the Germanic family, however, must be
the codes of the early Germanic kingdoms. At least four of these antedate
the mid sixth century, among them the Frankish Pactus Legis Salicae, whose
first recension seems to have originated in the years prior to 507, 83 and the
Liber Constitutionum of the Burgundians, issued in 517. 84 The codes themselves
are deeply influenced by Roman law, 85 but on the other hand there is
no reason to believe that the picture given of the Germanic family is anything
other than accurate. In general, the laws define a system of kinship
dominated by men and by paternal kin, but not exclusively so – to see the
system as agnatic does not reflect the full range of the evidence, which
implies a cognatic pattern of kinship, and often the dominance of the
nuclear family. 86 Certainly, within the Frankish context there was a type of
land defined as Salic land, which could only be inherited by males. 87 There
were, however, other types of property, including land, which could be
inherited by females. 88 Further, the special status of Salic land was removed
by Chilperic I in the second half of the sixth century. 89 It is, in fact, likely that
this land was not of a type traditional among Germanic peoples, but was
rather land which was in origin associated with the military arrangements of
the later Roman empire, and thus necessarily confined to males. 90
Inheritance patterns, even among the Franks, do not, therefore, imply a
simple patrilineal society. Early-sixth-century Germanic legislation relating
to sexual intercourse, on the other hand, suggests rather more indulgence
towards male than towards female sexuality. For a Frankish male to have
sex with his own female servant was apparently not frowned upon,
although sex with someone else’s female servant incurred a hefty fine, 91 and
a man who married the female slave of another was supposed to be
reduced to servitude. 92 Even the status of the offspring of a king could be
questioned if the mother was a slave. When Guntram had a son by the slave
girl Marcatrude, Sagittarius, bishop of Gap, perhaps following Roman
rather than Frankish law, seems to have claimed that the child was the property
of the girl’s master. 93 Not that Roman and Germanic law necessarily
differed greatly over the issue of intercourse between slaves and free.
Constantine ordered a free woman cohabiting with a slave to be executed
82 Demandt (1989) 76–80 for the contrary legislation of C.Th. iii.14.1 and its Germanic derivatives.
83 Wood, Merovingian Kingdoms 108–13.
84 Wood (1986) 10; the two other codes are the Code of Euric and the Edictum Theodorici.
85 Wormald (1977). 86 Murray (1983); see also Ausenda (1995).
87 PLS 59, 6, ed. Eckhardt (1962). 88 PLS 59, 1–5. 89 PLS 108. 90 Anderson (1995).
91 PLS 35, 1–2. 92 PLS 13, 9.
93 Greg. Tur. Hist. v.20; C.Th. iv.6.3; iv.6.7; iv.8.7: xii.19.1; see also PLS 13, 9.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008