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The Economics of Ruler-Cult in Anglo-Saxon Law
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 January 2014
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If economists have been accused, like Oscar Wilde's cynic, of knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing, historians, on the other hand, often know the value of everything and the price of nothing. Since value and price are historically related, however, the historian who ignores the economics which both embodies and reflects a value-system and world-view does so at his own cost. Thus, the laws of the early Germanic tribes — and of the Anglo-Saxons in particular, to whom this study is confined — are dominated by virtual tables of prices and compensations for offenses and injuries. To the general historian, and even to the medievalist, these are perhaps the least fascinating elements of the laws. Certainly the more cosmic elements of Germanic society almost vanish here beneath the weight of numbers. Nonetheless, even these apparently raw economic sources reveal, upon investigation, not only societal structure and the relationship of church and state but a concept of kingship which is the key to both. Penalties and fines in Anglo-Saxon law will be analyzed here to illuminate these aspects of the early English world.
The two greatest influences on the actual codification of Anglo-Saxon law are Roman and ecclesiastical. Before the introduction of Christianity no Germanic written code is known, and the written formulation of law is largely stimulated by an attempt to cope with the new religion and with the status of its institution, the Church, in terms of Germanic society. In Kentish law, for example, dooms concerning the Church show less alliteration and consequently may be taken as newer.
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References
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