Set of Legal Provisions, first known document in English
The
Law of Æthelberht
is a set of legal provisions written in
Old English
, probably dating to the early 7th century. It originates in the
kingdom of Kent
, and is the first
Germanic-language
law code
. It is also thought to be the earliest example of a document written in English, or indeed in any form of a surviving Germanic language, though extant only in an early 12th-century manuscript,
Textus Roffensis
.
The code is concerned primarily with preserving
social harmony
through
compensation
and punishment for personal injury, typical of Germanic-origin legal systems. Compensations are arranged according to social rank, descending from king to slave. The initial provisions of the code offer protection to the church. Though the latter were probably innovations, much of the remainder of the code may be derived from earlier legal custom transmitted orally.
Manuscript, editions and translations
[
edit
]
There is only one surviving manuscript of
Æthelberht
's law,
Textus Roffensis
or the "Rochester Book".
[2]
[3]
: 20
[4]
: 1
The
Kentish
laws occupy folios 1
v
to 6
v
, of which Æthelberht's has 1
v
to 3
v
.
[3]
: 21
[5]
: 246
This is a compilation of
Anglo-Saxon laws
, lists and genealogies drawn together in the early 1120s, half a millennium after Æthelberht's law is thought to have been first written down.
[4]
: 1
Æthelberht's law precedes the other Kentish law codes, which themselves precede various West Saxon and English royal legislation, as well as charters relating to
Rochester Cathedral
.
[6]
Æthelberht's law is written in the same hand as the laws of other Kentish monarchs.
[3]
: 20
The compilation was produced at the instigation of
Ernulf
,
bishop of Rochester
, friend of the lawyer-bishop
Ivo of Chartres
.
[4]
: 1?2
Ernulf was a legally minded bishop like Ivo, a canon lawyer and judge.
[3]
: 22
He was responsible for commissioning copies of the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
at
Canterbury Cathedral Priory
and
Peterborough Abbey
, as prior and abbot respectively.
[3]
: 22?23
Francis Tate
made a transcription of
Textus Roffensis
c. 1589, which survives as British Museum MS Cotton Julius CII.
Henry Spelman
,
Ecclesiarum Orbis Brittanici
(London, 1639), provided a Latin translation of provisions relating to the church. In 1640
Johannes de Laet
translated the whole code into Latin. Though no original survives, several 18th-century authors copied it.
[3]
: 251
The first full edition (with Latin translation) was:
Many other Latin translations editions of the Kentish laws or
Textus Roffensis
followed in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, mostly from English and German editors.
[3]
: 251?256
Notable examples include:
- Felix Liebermann
,
Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen
(Halle, 1897?1916), with German translation
- Frederick Levi Attenborough
,
The Laws of the Earliest English Kings
(Cambridge, 1922), with English translation
- Lisi Oliver,
The Beginnings of English Law
(Toronto, 2002), with English translation
In 2014, Rochester Cathedral and the
John Rylands University Library of Manchester
cooperated to make the complete text available online in facsimile.
Origin
[
edit
]
The code is attributed to
Æthelberht
, and for this reason is dated to that king's reign (c. 590?616×618).
[3]
Æthelberht's code is thought to be both the earliest law code of any kind in any Germanic language and the earliest surviving document written down in the English language.
[7]
[4]
: 10
Æthelberht is thought to be the king behind the code because the law's red-ink introductory rubric in
Textus Roffensis
attributes it to him.
[5]
: 93
Bede
(
Historia Ecclesiastica
ii. 5), writing in
Northumbria
more than a century after King Æthelberht, attributes a code of laws to the king:
Among the other benefits which he thoughtfully conferred on his people, he also established enacted judgments for them, following the examples of the Romans, with the council of his wise men. These were written in English speech, and are held and observed by them to this day.
[4]
: 20
Bede goes on to describe details of the code accurately.
[5]
: 29
In the introduction to
Alfred the Great
's law the latter king relates that he consulted the laws of Æthelberht.
[3]
: 25
The code as it survives was not written in the king's name and the 12th-century author of the
rubric
may have been influenced by Bede in his attribution.
[3]
: 83
[4]
: 17
[5]
: 93
The lack of attribution in the original text may be a sign that law-making was not primarily a royal activity as it was to become in later centuries.
[5]
: 94
There is evidence that much of the code was taken from pre-existing customary practice transmitted orally.
[3]
: 34?41
[4]
: 13
The church provisions aside, the code's structure looks like an "architectural mnemonic", proceeding from top to bottom.
[3]
: 36?37
[8]
It begins with the king and ends with slaves.
[3]
: 36
Likewise, the section on personal injuries, which contains most of the code's provisions, begins with hair at the top of the body and ends with the toenail.
[3]
: 36
Use of poetic devices such as
consonance
and
alliteration
also indicate the text's oral background.
[3]
: 37?41
[5]
: 95
Æthelberht's law is hence largely derived from
ælþeaw
, established customary law, rather than royal
domas
, "judgements".
[5]
: 95
It is not clear why the code was written down however. The suggested date coincides with the coming of Christianity?the religion of the
Romans
and
Franks
?to the English of Kent.
[3]
: 8?14
[5]
: 16?17
The code may be an attempt to imitate the Romans and establish the Kentish people as a respectable "civilised" people.
[4]
: 16?17
Christianity and writing were furthered too by the Kentish king's marriage to
Bertha
, daughter of the Frankish king
Charibert I
.
[3]
: 12?14
There have been suggestions that
Augustine of Canterbury
may have urged it.
[9]
Legal historian
Patrick Wormald
argued that it followed a model from the 614 Frankish church council in
Paris
, which was attended by the abbot of
St Augustine's Abbey
and the
bishop of Rochester
.
[4]
: 16?17
[5]
: 100
The
wergeld
ratios for churchmen in Æthelberht's code are similar to those of other Germanic laws, like
Lex Ribuaria
and the
Swabian
and
Bavarian
laws.
[5]
: 97?99
Content and language
[
edit
]
Patrick Wormald
divided the text into the following sections (the chapter numbers are those in Frederick Levi Attenborough's
Laws of the Earliest English Kings
and in Lisi Oliver's
Beginnings of English Law
):
[10]
[3]
: 60?81
[4]
: 3?10
- Compensation for churchmen [Attenborough: 1; Oliver: 1?7]
- Compensation for the king and his dependents [Attenborough: 2?12; Oliver: 8?17]
- Compensation for an
eorl
and his dependents [Attenborough: 13?14; Oliver: 18?19]
- Compensation for a
ceorl
and his dependents [Attenborough: 15?25, 27?32; Oliver: 20?26, 28?32]
- Compensation for the semi-free [Attenborough: 26?27; Oliver: 26?27]
- Personal injuries [Attenborough: 33?72; Oliver: 33?71]
- Compensation and injuries concerning women [Attenborough: 73?84; Oliver: 72?77]
- Compensation for servants [Attenborough: 85?88; Oliver: 78?81]
- Compensation for slaves [Attenborough: 89?90; Oliver: 82?83]
Another legal historian, Lisi Oliver, offered a similar means of division:
[3]
: 36
- Offences against the church and secular public assembly [Oliver: 1?7]
- Offences relating to the king and his household [Oliver: 1?7]
- Offences against
eorlas
("noblemen") [Oliver: 8?17]
- Offences against
ceorlas
("freemen") [Oliver: 20?32]
- Personal injury offences [Oliver: 33?71]
- Offences against women [Oliver: 72?77]
- Offences against
esnas
("semi-free", "servants") [Oliver: 78?81]
- Offences against
þeowas
("slaves") [Oliver: 81?83]
In addition to protecting church property, the code offers a fixed means of making social conflict and its escalation less likely and ending feud by "righting wrongs" [Wormald].
[4]
: 11?15
Two units of currency are used, the
scilling
and the
sceatt
. In Æthelberht's day a
sceatt
was a unit of gold with the weight of a grain of barley, with 20
sceattas
per
scilling
. One ox was probably valued at one
scilling
or "shilling".
[11]
: 82
The law is written in
Old English
, and there are many archaic features to the code's language.
[3]
: 25?34
For instance, it uses an
instrumental
"
dative
of quantity" [Oliver] that is obsolete in later Old English grammar:
Gif friman edor gegangeð, iiii scillingum gebete
("If a freeman enters an enclosure, let him pay with 4 shillings").
[3]
: 68?69
This is a construction found in other West Germanic languages but not elsewhere in Old English except once in the
Laws of Hlothhere and Eadric
(2.1).
[3]
: 32, 42
As another example, in the
apodosis
the verb is always in the end position in Æthelberht's law; while this is grammatical in Old English, it is an archaic construction for a legal text.
[3]
: 31
Words such as
mæthlfrith
("assembly peace")
drihtinbeage
("lord-payment"),
leodgeld
("person-price"),
hlaf-ætan
("loaf-eater"),
feaxfang
("seizing of hair") and
mægðbot
("maiden-compensation") are either absent in other Old English texts or very rare.
[3]
: 29
The meanings of some of these words are debated: for example, the word
læt
, which occurs as a simplex only in Æthelberht's law-code, seems to mean some kind of freedman. Some past scholarship has supposed that it specifically means people from the ethnically British population of Kent, whereas other work (including Lisi Oliver's) has concluded that it is a term denoting social status with no ethnic connotations.
[3]
: 91?93
Doubling vowels to indicate length (for instance,
taan
, "foot"), common to all written insular languages in the early Middle Ages but increasingly uncommon later on, occurs three times in Æthelberht's code but not elsewhere in
Textus Roffensis
.
[3]
: 26
Notes
[
edit
]
- ^
pp. 89-93
Dissertatio Epistolaris
, digitized
here
- ^
A
textus
was a book with a decorated cover, suitable to be kept in the church by the high altar. A less decorated book, for use only in the cloister, would be a
liber
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
i
j
k
l
m
n
o
p
q
r
s
t
u
v
w
x
y
z
aa
Oliver, Lisi (2002),
The Beginnings of English Law
, Toronto Medieval Texts and Translations, 14, Toronto:
University of Toronto Press
,
ISBN
0-8020-3535-3
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
i
j
k
Wormald (2005),
The First Code of English Law
, Canterbury, UK: Canterbury Commemoration Society,
ISBN
0-9551196-0-X
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
i
j
Wormald, Patrick
(2001),
The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century / Volume I: Legislation and its Limits
, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers,
ISBN
0-631-22740-7
.
- ^
Wormald,
Making of English Law
, pp. 246?247, table 4.8, for summary of the manuscript's contents
- ^
Stenton,
Anglo-Saxon England
, p. 60
- ^
The phrase "architectural mnemonic" comes from Mary Carruthers, for which see the citation at Oliver,
Beginnings of English Law
, p. 215, n. 165
- ^
For examples, see Oliver,
Beginnings of English Law
, p. 16
- ^
Attenborough,
Laws of the Earliest English Kings
, pp. 4?17.
- ^
Oliver,
Beginnings of English Law
, p. 82
References
[
edit
]
- Attenborough, F.L.
(1922),
The Laws of the Earliest English Kings
(Llanerch Press Facsimile Reprint 2000 ed.), Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press
,
ISBN
978-1-86143-101-1
, retrieved
20 January
2017
- Textus Roffensis
, John Rylands Library, archived from
the original
on 3 January 2015
, retrieved
3 January
2014
(online facsimile)
- Oliver, Lisi (2002),
The Beginnings of English Law
, Toronto Medieval Texts and Translations, 14, Toronto:
University of Toronto Press
,
ISBN
0-8020-3535-3
- Stenton, Frank M.
(1971),
Anglo-Saxon England
(third ed.), Oxford:
Oxford University Press
,
ISBN
978-0-19-280139-5
- Wormald, Patrick
(2001),
The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century / Volume I: Legislation and its Limits
, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers,
ISBN
0-631-22740-7
- Wormald, Patrick (2005),
The First Code of English Law
, Canterbury, UK: Canterbury Commemoration Society,
ISBN
0-9551196-0-X