Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/28

 14 /. BEFORE THE NORMAN CONQUEST

nothing distinctively Christian. If the Sicambrian has already bowed his neck to the catholic yoke, he is not yet actively destroying by his laws what he had formerly adored.^ On the other hand, his kingdom seems to stretch south of the Loire, and he has looked for suggestions to the laws of the West Goths. The Lex Salica, though written in Latin, is very free from the Roman taint. It contains in the so-called Malberg Glosses many old Frankish words, some of which, owing to mistranscription, are puzzles for the philo- logical science of our own day. Like the other Germanic folk-laws, it consists largely of a tariff of offences and atone- ments; but a few precious chapters, every word of which has been a cause of learned strife, lift the curtain for a moment and allow us to watch the Frank as he litigates. We see more clearly here than elsewhere the formalism, the sacramental symbolism of ancient legal procedure. We have no more instructive document ; and let us remember that, by virtue of the Norman Conquest, the Lex Salica is one of the ancestors of English law.

Whether in the days when Justinian was legislating, the Western or Ripuarian Franks had written law may not be certain ; but it is thought that the main part of the Lex Ribuaria is older than 596.^ Though there are notable variations, it is in part a modernized edition of the Salica, showing the influence of the clergy and of Roman law. On the other hand, there seems little doubt that the core of the Lex Burgundionwm was issued by King Gundobad (474-516) in the last years of the fifth century.^

Burgundians and West Goths were scattered among Roman provincials. They were East Germans; they had long been Christians, though addicted to the heresy of Arius. They could say that they had Roman authority for their occupation of Roman soil. Aquitania Secunda had been made over to the West Goths ; the Burgundians vanquished by ber; adora quod incendisti, incende quod adorasti." 107. Edited by Sohm in Monumenta Germanica. » Brunner, op. cit. i. 332 ff.; Schroder, op. cit. 234; Esmein, op. cit. 108. Edited by v. Salis in M. G.
 * Greg. Turon. ii. 22 (ed. Omont, p. 60) : " Mitis depone coUa, Sicam-
 * Brunner, op. cit. i. 303 flF. ; Schroder, op. cit. 229 ; Esmein, op. cit.