United States or Guatemala ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The Franks reached the clearings of the forest and nominally subjected Gaul to their power, but they were now in a minority, and the conquered soon succeeded in absorbing the conquerors. It is significant that the "Lex Salica," the oldest document in which the name of the Coal Wood is mentioned, describes it as "the boundary of the territories occupied by the Frankish people."
A perfect example of a singular succession worked out by the fiction of kinship is to be found in the story of Burnt Njal, an Icelandic saga, which gives us a living picture of a society hardly more advanced than the Salian Franks, as we see them in the Lex Salica.
Salic Law, Tit., 62: de alodis, 6: de terra vero Salica in mulierem nulla portio hereditatis transit, sed hoc virilis sexus adquirat, hoc est, filii in ipsa hereditate succedunt. Lex Saxonum, vii, 1: Pater aut mater defuncti filio, non filiae hereditatem relinquit. Cf. Lex Angliorum et Werinorum, vi: de alodibus. Lex Salica, Tit., 62. Lex Ripuariorum, Tit., 56. Cf.
Cf. lex Salica, Tit., 61 a very curious account of formalities to be observed in such a case. It was deemed sufficient for a male relative, say, the father, to assert the innocence of the woman under solemn oath: for it was thought that he would be unwilling to do this if he knew the woman was guilty and so incur eternal Hell-fire as a punishment for perjury.
In the early days when the Great West of the United States was just being opened up and when society there was in a very crude state, a horse thief was regularly hanged; but murder was hardly a fault. Lex Burgundionum, 47, 1 and 2. The guilty man was put to death. Lex Salica, Tit., 23. Id, Tit., 28. Lex Baiuvariorum, Tit., xiii, 2.
The liability was still conceived in the same way as when the bail actually put his own body into the power of the party secured. One of Charlemagne's additions to the Lex Salica speaks of a freeman who has committed himself to the power of another by way of surety. /3/ The very phrase is copied in the English laws of Henry I. /4/ We have seen what this meant in the story of Huon of Bordeaux.
Word Of The Day