IMC 2011: Sessions
Session 1505: Establishing a Person's Worth: Approaches to Wergeld and Composition, I - Methods and Politics of Quantifying
Thursday 14 July 2011, 09.00-10.30
| Sponsor: | Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft / Sonderforschungsbereich 700 'Governance in Areas of Limited Statehood', Freie Universität Berlin / Fryske Akademy, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) |
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| Organisers: | Stefan Esders, Geschichte der Spätantike und des frühen Mittelalters, Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut, Freie Universität Berlin Han Nijdam, Fryske Akademy, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) |
| Moderator/Chair: | Arnoud-Jan A. Bijsterveld, Department of Sociology, Tilburg University |
| Paper 1505-a | Wergeld in the Leges Langobardorum (Language: English) Index terms: Law, Mentalities |
| Paper 1505-b | The Wergeld following the Manuscripts (Language: English) Index terms: Law, Mentalities |
| Paper 1505-c | Measuring a Person's Worth in Frisian Law Texts, c. 800-1500 (Language: English) Index terms: Law, Mentalities |
| Abstract | The hallmark of early medieval law codes is the prominent feature of wergilds and monetary fines. The most obvious wedge that divided the body corporal into a group of well protected ingenuii and a group of almost worthless juridical extras, the servi, was the inherited Roman distinction of free and unfree. Yet social status and a man's worth were determined by far more factors than freedom and unfreedom. Once a man's worth was recorded in the lex scripta, compliance did not necessarily follow suit. In social practice arbitrators of law were needed as much as brokers of wergild credits. |