The ''Lex Thuringorum'' ("Law of the

Thuringians The Thuringii, or Thuringians were a Germanic peoples, Germanic people who lived in the kingdom of the Thuringians that appeared during the late Migration Period south of the Harz Mountains of central Germania, a region still known today as Thur ...

") is a

law code A code of law, also called a law code or legal code, is a systematic collection of statutes. It is a type of legislation that purports to exhaustively cover a complete system of laws or a particular area of law as it existed at the time the co ...

that survives today in one 10th-century manuscript, the Codex Corbeiensis, alongside a copy of the ''

Lex Saxonum The ''Lex Saxonum'' are a series of laws issued by Charlemagne between 782 and 803 as part of his plan to subdue the Saxon nation. The law is thus a compromise between the traditional customs and statutes of the pagan Saxons and the established l ...

'', the law of the

Saxons The Saxons, sometimes called the Old Saxons or Continental Saxons, were a Germanic people of early medieval "Old" Saxony () which became a Carolingian " stem duchy" in 804, in what is now northern Germany. Many of their neighbours were, like th ...

. The code was compiled in the first decade of the 9th century, probably 802–3, under

Frankish Frankish may refer to: * Franks, a Germanic tribe and their culture ** Frankish language or its modern descendants, Franconian languages, a group of Low Germanic languages also commonly referred to as "Frankish" varieties * Francia, a post-Roman ...

patronage. The language of the law code is

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

and few Thuringians could have read it, nonetheless some must have cooperated with Frankish officials during the process of collecting and codifying the customs. The ''Lex Thuringorum'', the ''Lex Saxonum'', the '' Lex Francorum Chamavorum'' and the ''

Lex Frisionum ''Lex Frisionum'' (the "Law of the Frisians", or more freely the "Frisian Law") was recorded in Latin during the reign of Charlemagne, after the year 785, when the Frankish conquest of Frisia was completed by the final defeat of the Saxon rebel lea ...

'' comprise the four so-called "Carolingian tribal laws" (''karolingischen Stammesrechte''), because they were produced at the same time at the direction of King Charles I in order to accommodate the differing legal customs of the nations living within his empire. They were neither totally faithful nor comprehensive reproductions of tribal law, but were created as part of a process of official

christianisation Christianization (or Christianisation) is a term for the specific type of change that occurs when someone or something has been or is being converted to Christianity. Christianization has, for the most part, spread through missions by individu ...

. The historian Timothy Reuter writes that "the manuscript transmission does not suggest that he Thuringian lawwas extensively used, though there are enough different strata of law still visible in the text to suggest that it was not merely a literary exercise." Per chapter 31 of the ''Lex Thuringorum'',

feud A feud , also known in more extreme cases as a blood feud, vendetta, faida, clan war, gang war, private war, or mob war, is a long-running argument or fight, often between social groups of people, especially family, families or clans. Feuds begin ...

s were heritable: "To whomever an inheritance of land should descend, he also should receive the battlegear—that is to say, the breastplate—and the bligationsof vengeance for kin and the payment of ''

wergild Weregild (also spelled wergild, wergeld (in archaic/historical usage of English), weregeld, etc.), also known as man price ( blood money), was a precept in some historical legal codes whereby a monetary value was established for a person's life, ...

''."''Ad quemncumque hereditas terrae pervenerit, ad illum vestis bellica, id est lorica, et ultio proximi et solutio leudis debet pertinere''. Karl Müllenhoff cited this passage to show that heritable feuds were of German origin, but more recent scholarship has rejected the view that the early medieval Germanic law codes represent pure Germanic law; rather they fuse Germanic and Roman customs. In the Thuringian law, the severity of punishment for the crime of ''raptus'' (abduction) is equivalent to that for murder, an indication that the former was understood to include rape or sexual violence. Per chapter 47, a woman was permitted to have money, but not to spend it as she saw fit, nor was she to marry without permission.

Notes

Editions

"Lex Thuringorum"
ed. Claudius von Schwerin, MGH, ''Fontes Iuris Germanici Antiqui''. Hanover: 1918.
"Lex Angliorum et Werinorum hoc est Thuringorum"
ed. Karl Friedrich von Richthofen, MGH, ''Leges'', I, v, 103–44.. Hanover: 1875–79.

Sources

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External links

Information on the ''lex Thuringorum'' and its manuscript tradition on the ' website
A database on Carolingian secular law texts (Karl Ubl, Cologne University, Germany, 2012). {{Authority control Germanic legal codes Thuringii Warini