The Edictum Rothari was the first written compilation of Lombard

Lombards

The Lombards , also referred to as Longobards, were a Germanic tribe of Scandinavian origin, who from 568 to 774 ruled a Kingdom in Italy...

 law

Law

Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...

, codified and promulgated 22 November 643 by King Rothari

Rothari

Rothari , of the house of Arodus, was king of the Lombards from 636 to 652; previously he had been duke of Brescia. He succeeded Arioald, who was an Arian like himself, and was one of the most energetic of Lombard kings...

. The custom (cawarfidae) of the Lombards, according to Paul the Deacon

Paul the Deacon

Paul the Deacon , also known as Paulus Diaconus, Warnefred, Barnefridus and Cassinensis, , was a Benedictine monk and historian of the Lombards.-Life:...

, the Lombard historian, had been held in memory before this. Now it was promulgated in Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

, a very vulgar and coarse Latin, by the king with the advice and consent of his council and his army.

The Edict, in 388 chapters, was primitive in comparison to other Germanic legislation of the time. It was also comparatively late, for the Franks

Franks

The Franks were a confederation of Germanic tribes first attested in the third century AD as living north and east of the Lower Rhine River. From the third to fifth centuries some Franks raided Roman territory while other Franks joined the Roman troops in Gaul. Only the Salian Franks formed a...

, Visigoths, and Anglo-Saxons

Anglo-Saxons

Anglo-Saxon is a term used by historians to designate the Germanic tribes who invaded and settled the south and east of Great Britain beginning in the early 5th century AD, and the period from their creation of the English nation to the Norman conquest. The Anglo-Saxon Era denotes the period of...

 had all compiled codices of law long before. Unlike the Breviarium Alaricianum of Alaric II

Alaric II

Alaric II, also known as Alarik, Alarich, and Alarico in Spanish and Portuguese or Alaricus in Latin succeeded his father Euric on December 28, 484, in Toulouse. He established his capital at Aire-sur-l'Adour in Aquitaine...

, it was mostly Germanic tribal law dealing with wergelds, inheritance

Inheritance

Inheritance is the practice of passing on property, titles, debts, rights and obligations upon the death of an individual. It has long played an important role in human societies...

, and duel

Duel

A duel is an arranged engagement in combat between two individuals, with matched weapons in accordance with agreed-upon rules.Duels in this form were chiefly practised in Early Modern Europe, with precedents in the medieval code of chivalry, and continued into the modern period especially among...

s, not a code of Roman laws. Despite its Latin, it was not a Roman product. Unlike the near-contemporary Forum Iudicum, it was not influenced by Canon law

Canon law (Catholic Church)

The canon law of the Catholic Church, is a fully developed legal system, with all the necessary elements: courts, lawyers, judges, a fully articulated legal code and principles of legal interpretation. It lacks the necessary binding force present in most modern day legal systems. The academic...

. Its only dealings with ecclesiastic matters was a prohibition on violence in churches. The Edict gives military authority to the dukes and gives civil authority to a schulthais (or reeve

Vogt

A Vogt ; plural Vögte; Dutch voogd; Danish foged; ; ultimately from Latin [ad]vocatus) in the Holy Roman Empire was the German title of a reeve or advocate, an overlord exerting guardianship or military protection as well as secular justice...

) in the countryside and a castaldus (or gastald

Gastald

A gastald was a Lombard official in charge of some portion of the royal demesne with civil, martial, and judicial powers. By the Edictum Rothari of 643, the gastalds were given the civil authority in the cities and the reeves the like authority in the countryside...

) in the city.

The Edict was written down by one Ansoald, not a bishop or lawyer, but a scribe of Lombard origin. It was affirmed by a gairethinx

Gairethinx

The gairethinx was a Lombard ceremony in which edicts and laws were affirmed by the army. It may have involved the entire army banging their spears on their shields. It may have been a much quieter event....

convened by Rothari in 643. The gairethinx was a gathering of the army who passed the law by clashing their spears on their shields in old Germanic fashion, a fitting passing for so Germanic a Latin code.

The Edict makes no references to public life, the governance of trade, the duties of a citizen; instead it is minutely concerned with compensations for wrongs, a feature familiar from the wergeld of Anglo-Saxons, and the defence of property rights. Though Lombard women were always in some status of wardship to the males of the family, and though a freeborn Lombard woman who married an aldius (half-free) or a slave might be slain or sold by her male kin, the respect, amounting to taboo

Taboo

A taboo is a strong social prohibition relating to any area of human activity or social custom that is sacred and or forbidden based on moral judgment, religious beliefs and or scientific consensus. Breaking the taboo is usually considered objectionable or abhorrent by society...

, that was owed to a freeborn Lombard woman was notable: if any one should "place himself in the way" of a free woman or girl, or injure her, he must pay nine hundred solidi

Solidus (coin)

The solidus was originally a gold coin issued by the Romans, and a weight measure for gold more generally, corresponding to 4.5 grams.-Roman and Byzantine coinage:...

, an immense sum. For comparison, if any one should "place himself in the way" of a free man he must pay him twenty solidi— if he had not done him any bodily injury— and in similar cases involving another man's slave or handmaid or aldius, he must pay twenty solidi to the lord, the price for copulation with another man's slave. Roman slaves were of lower value in these matters than Germanic slaves "of the nations".

Physical injuries were all minutely catalogued, with a price for each tooth, finger or toe. Property was a concern: many laws dealt specially with injuries to an aldius or to a household slave. A still lower class, according to their assigned values, were the agricultural slaves.

In the laws of inheritance, illegitimate offspring had rights as well as legitimate ones. No father could disinherit his son except for certain grievous crimes. Donations of property were made in the presence of an assembly called the thinc, which gave rise to the barbarous Latin verb thingare, to grant or donate before witnesses. If a man shall wish to thingare his property, he must make the gairethinx ("spear donation") in the presence of free men.

Slaves might be emancipated in various ways, but there were severe laws for the pursuit and restoration of fugitives. In judicial procedure, a system of compurgation

Compurgation

Compurgation, also called wager of law, is a defence used primarily in medieval law. A defendant could establish his innocence or nonliability by taking an oath and by getting a required number of persons, typically twelve, to swear they believed the defendant's oath.Compurgation was found in...

 prevailed, as well as the wager of battle.

The general assembly of freemen continued to add ritual solemnity to important acts, such as the enactment of new laws or the selection of a king.

Lombard law governed Lombards solely, it must be remembered. The Roman population expected to live under long-codified Roman law

Roman law

Roman law is the legal system of ancient Rome, and the legal developments which occurred before the 7th century AD — when the Roman–Byzantine state adopted Greek as the language of government. The development of Roman law comprises more than a thousand years of jurisprudence — from the Twelve...

. It was declared that foreigners who came to settle in Lombard territories were expected to live according to the laws of the Lombards, unless they obtained from the king the right to live according to some other law.

Later by the reign of King Liutprand (712-743) most inhabitants of Lombard Italy were considered "Lombards" regardless of remote ancestry and they followed Lombard Law.

See also

• Early Germanic law
  Early Germanic law
  Several Latin law codes of the Germanic peoples written in the Early Middle Ages survive, dating to between the 5th and 9th centuries...
  
  
• Ine of Wessex
  Ine of Wessex
  Ine was King of Wessex from 688 to 726. He was unable to retain the territorial gains of his predecessor, Cædwalla, who had brought much of southern England under his control and expanded West Saxon territory substantially...
  
  
• Lex Salica
• Breviarium Alaricianum
• Forum Iudicum
• Corpus Juris Civilis
  Corpus Juris Civilis
  The Corpus Juris Civilis is the modern name for a collection of fundamental works in jurisprudence, issued from 529 to 534 by order of Justinian I, Eastern Roman Emperor...
  
  
• Codex Theodosianus
  Codex Theodosianus
  The Codex Theodosianus was a compilation of the laws of the Roman Empire under the Christian emperors since 312. A commission was established by Theodosius II in 429 and the compilation was published in the eastern half of the Roman Empire in 438...
  
  

Sources

• Oman, Charles
  Charles Oman
  Sir Charles William Chadwick Oman was a British military historian of the early 20th century. His reconstructions of medieval battles from the fragmentary and distorted accounts left by chroniclers were pioneering...
  
  . The Dark Ages 476-918. London, 1914.
• Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum IV.xlii (English translation by William Dudley Foulke, 1907)