PAUL FREEDMAN: So last
time we spoke about the
collapse of the Roman Empire.
And I didn't quite definitively
answer the
question: External force
- Internal collapse?
There are other possible
explanations: an eminent
historian of the barbarian says
that the Roman Empire
committed suicide by accident.
That essentially it was just
a political problem.
The wrong people became
emperors.
Some bad things happened
and one day there
it was, it was gone.
I'm not sure I buy that; I like
long-term causes more.
But it is important to emphasize
that a lot of this
is contingency and not
inevitability.
Historians generally tend to
make things look as if they
had to happen.
As if there's sort of long-term
things playing out
inevitably.
And the longer or the farther
away the historian is from the
period that he or she is
studying, the greater that
tendency because the look
back is longer.
So in talking about both the
Empire and the barbarians, I
want to at least remind you that
events could have gone
other ways.
There are lots of long-term
tendencies, but we're talking
about a series of factors
that are both
immediate and long term.
This is relevant to talking
about the barbarians
and who they are.
Which is more of a mystery
than it might seem.
Who they are as in, what does it
mean to say that someone is
a Visigoth?
How much have I described
what that means?
And despite the business about
plunder, that's not actually
the only thing they
were after.
As we have tried to emphasize,
they liked the Roman Empire.
They wanted to share in its
advantages, not to destroy it.
We've emphasized accommodation
rather than conquest. We've
said that this is the
end of a world, not
the end of the world.
It is the end of a certain
civilization, perhaps, or
maybe transformation of that
civilization, but it's not the
end of civilization.
They're not invaders
from outer space.
Where do they come from?
Who are they?
What are these aspects
of accommodation?
That's partly what we want to
talk about today in discussing
the barbarian kingdoms after
the collapse of Rome.
So 476 to 530.
What happens in 530 is that
the Eastern Roman Empire
embarks on a reconquest
of the West
under the emperor Justinian.
And that will be the
subject of our
discussion a week from today.
Any questions in
the meanwhile?
Notice that in the Burgundian
Code the authors of the code,
the Burgundians, call themselves
barbarians.
They distinguish between
barbarians and Romans.
Even though they use the word,
it's deceptive to think of
barbarians, or tribes, or
Germans as if these were
absolute well-defined terms
that corresponded to an
absolute well-defined
set of realities.
What do we know about
these people before
they enter the Empire?
We know something from
archaeology.
But as they moved around, as I
said they're not nomadic, they
have settlements, but they're
not very urban settlements.
They have gravesites.
People who have gravesites with
a lot of graves are not
moving around a lot.
So that's one indication.
And the gravesites sometimes
have stuff in them, things
buried with them.
And among other things, they
show that they had trade with
the Roman Empire because
they've got Roman
artifacts in them.
Well, OK.
But we actually don't find
out that much about them.
The main written source for
pre-invasion, let's call them
Germanic tribes delicately, is
Tacitus, the Roman historian
better known, or best known,
for his very pessimistic
annals of the history
of the Roman Empire.
But also the author of a brief
work called Germania about the
German tribes.
For Tacitus, the Germans- that
is the peoples living beyond
the Rhine frontier- are both
childlike and noble.
They're warlike.
From the Roman point of view,
these Barbarians are intent on
invading the Empire and
enjoying its riches.
Hence the defensive kinds of
frontiers we've talked about.
The Rhine, or in Britain,
Hadrian's Wall, which you can
still see in the north of
England, not that far from the
Scottish border.
That to guard not against
Germans, but Celts, Picts, and
Scots, in particular.
Tacitus portrays the Germans
as kind of warlike.
Around the year 100 is
his description.
But he never visited Germania.
And if you'd asked him, well, if
you're going to write about
them, shouldn't you do
some field work?
he'd have looked at you
as if you were crazy.
Go there?
Me?
Moi?
You've got to be kidding.
The reason he wrote the work
was probably not an
anthropological description of
the Germans, but as a way of
berating the Romans.
If you describe people who are
virtuous but primitive, you
can use that to castigate
your own people.
Rousseau's noble savage where
the American Indians are used
to attack supposedly civilized
societies is an example.
Or descriptions of the South
Seas, some of Herman
Melville's earlier works.
Or Robert Louis Stevenson.
Or Gauguin's paintings.
Contrast a beautiful, natural,
simple world far superior to
the fatiguing rat race of what
passes for civilization.
So Tacitus' Germans are warlike,
concerned with
personal bravery and honor.
They have close family ties.
They're heterosexuals.
They treat their women well.
All of these are supposed to
contrast with what Tacitus,
who's a bit of a scold, Tacitus
sees as Roman decadence.
The Romans are given
to prostitution.
None of that in the German
realms. The Romans are given
to same sex love.
Oh, no, no, no.
The Germans know that
that is really evil.
They don't practice divorce,
according to Tacitus.
Now this is not--
This is a moralistic rather than
an ethnographic treatise.
He does condemn them
for certain vices.
The vices typically ascribed to
so-called primitive peoples
by the civilized.
They're lazy.
They tend to get drunk.
They quarrel.
They gamble.
In several respects Tacitus,
however, describes things that
are true of later German
practices visible in the
Burgundian Code, for example.
And that he does not
make up for any
particular moralistic purpose.
Two of these things
are the comitatus.
The comitatus is the important
men surrounding the leader,
his entourage, but his military
entourage, his armed men.
Not just bodyguards, but members
of a gang, I guess
would be the closest simile.
People who are loyal to their
superior, but who have a
certain amount of autonomy.
They're not just sort of paid,
as I said, bodyguards.
They are his followers.
An anachronistic word would
be "vassals" anachronistic
because it's not used
at this time.
His military followers.
Armed military followers,
the comitatus.
Tacitus describes the feud.
Feud between clans.
Feuds are generally
characteristic of societies
without a strong central
government and with fairly
generous definitions
of kinship.
A generous definition of kinship
means you know who
your second cousin is, maybe
your third cousin, maybe your
third cousin twice removed.
And that cousin is going to
consider your interests to be
his or her interests as well.
You might expect your children
or parents to support you, but
you probably don't expect your
great uncles or second cousins
to do much for you.
So in terms of vengeance, which
is also protection, in
other words, I am protected by
the fact that if somebody
kills me, my clan will take
vengeance on their clan.
In terms of protection and
vengeance, extended kinship is
related to a feud and to keeping
order in a society
that doesn't have a very
powerful central government.
One way of avoiding feuds that
killed too many people is
compensation.
And this compensation is
mentioned by Tacitus and is
what appears in the Burgundian
Code and elsewhere as wergeld.
Wergeld is the money paid in
compensation for hurting or
killing someone.
I killed your brother.
We have a drunken brawl.
I don't like the way he
describes my mother.
And I kill him.
I'm sorry, but that's just
the way things go.
What are you going
to do about it?
Are you going to kill me?
Are you going to kill
a cousin of mine?
Or maybe you'll accept
compensation based on, say,
what kind of guy he was.
Was he a silversmith?
In which case I'm going
to have to pay a
huge amount of money.
Or was he just some guy?
Some random guy, random
Burgundian?
Or free Burgundian?
Or freed, formerly slave?
All of these are tariffs.
They're sliding scales
of compensation.
Tacitus mentions this.
So we're looking at the
Burgundian Code, and there are
other barbarian law codes, for
clues as to how the society
functioned.
But of course, it's a society
that's already
in the Roman Empire.
It looks like before they
entered the empire, they lived
in little villages.
They cultivated grain, but they
were more cattle-raisers.
They're skilled at
iron working.
They also supplemented their
income by a spot of raiding
and warfare.
Opportunistic warfare.
Ties of kinship are
very important.
When we're talking about a clan,
extended kinship group,
we're talking about maybe
50 households.
And we'll see this again.
We'll see this with
the Bedouins in
the desert, for example.
Within the clan you're
not supposed to feud.
Not supposed to.
Above the clan level
is some kind of
confederation or tribe.
And this is where things get
kind of difficult, because we
don't really know how one clan
considered another clan to be
part of something larger.
That is, we know that the Romans
call the people who
defeated them at Adrianople
the Visigoths.
"Oh, my gosh.
Here I am.
Adrianople.
The Visigoths are winning.
What am I going to do?"
But who are the Visigoths?
One theory is that they're just
groups of people who come
together in contact with the
Roman Empire, in part because
the Roman Empire calls
them something.
It gives them a name and
they develop what's
called fictive kinship.
From a common ancestor.
They invent the notion that they
all come from one place
and one ancestor.
This process of sort of
fictitious ethnic invention is
called "ethnogenesis."
Ethnogenesis means the birth
of an ethnicity.
Rather than some kind of
biological fact that you could
confirm with DNA, e.g.--
all Visigoths have some sort of
biological thing in common.
These people are not really
related, but they invent a
common ancestor.
And this question of who forms
a real group remains both
important as a real thing.
For example, American
Indian tribes.
There are some whose claims to
existence are indisputable.
They have treaties with
the United States.
They've had reservations
for many years.
But now with the inducements
for tribes, the tax free
status, the ability to have
casinos and things like that,
there are petitions for tribes
to be recognized as such.
And here the question
of ethnicity.
Ethnic identification becomes
extremely important.
A more sinister and much more
widespread modern aspect of
ethnogenesis is precisely the
use of the Germanic barbarians
as the origins of the Germans.
It's no accident that in the
late nineteenth and early
twentieth century, culminating
but not limited to the Nazis,
the idea of the Germans as a
racial group; as a group with
a common Aryan- with a "y"-
ancestry; As manly and as pure
in the sense that Tacitus
portrays them becomes a
polemical idea.
A fighting idea.
An invented idea
of great force.
Just because something is false,
it does not necessarily
lack historical importance.
So the idea of ethnogenesis,
of the invention of a group
called the "Visigoths",
is one way of
approaching who they are.
On the other hand, there's not
a whole lot of evidence that
they're doing this.
There's not a whole lot of
evidence that they are
developing this notion
of a common ancestor.
Much of the evidence,
or seeming
evidence, for that is Roman.
A lot of this ethnogenesis
comes from
contact with the Romans.
Certainly peoples who come in
contact with those who are
more civilized than they are,
and by civilized I mean
peoples who have writing, who
live in cities, who have
extensive trade and
administration.
The so-called barbarian peoples
are going to want to
define themselves against
the Romans.
Hence, among other things, many
of these invaders are
Arian, with an "i." They use
religious difference as part
of their identity.
So they have come into the
empire and, as we said last
time, they come into the empire
first as allied troops,
as refugees, as federati.
Federati, that is to say armies
of the Roman Empire.
They are supported by a system
with the bland name of
hospitality.
Hospitality meaning that they're
settled on the land of
Romans and they share in the
revenue of that land.
That's how the Romans
pay them.
They don't pay them cash.
They don't pay them
in plunder.
They pay them in a portion
of the tax revenue.
So you owe a reasonably
powerful but not quite
powerful enough senator
in Burgandy.
You settle some friendly
Burgundian
troops on your land.
And you give them hospitality,
that is to say one third of
the tax revenue that you're
collecting for the empire.
Or maybe one third of just your
regular old private revenues.
This is a kind of accommodation
then.
It's accommodation that costs
money, but it is part of a set
of ways that the Roman elite
figures out how to deal with
these invaders.
Collaborate with them.
So the Roman aristocratic land
owners and the barbarian war
leaders come to various kinds
of accommodation.
Now, the accommodation differs
depending on where we're
speaking of.
And now we come to the point
of having to describe the
barbarian kingdoms.
I've given you two maps, one
of which you're not to show
people who are not
in the class.
This one.
The one with the arrows.
Yale University is home to one
of the great historians of our
time, Walter Goffart.
And I can't believe that I'm
talking about all sorts of
people like Wickham and Goffart
in something that's
going to be widely available,
but, anyway let me express my
admiration to him, great early
Medieval historian who could
certainly run rings around me.
He's retired.
He taught at the University
of Toronto.
And among his many works is one
that completely destroys
the notion of having invaders
with arrows.
This whole idea, like they've
got this path; we know where
they are; they come
from somewhere.
See up where what is now
southern Sweden, Skandia?
A lot of these histories, or
what purport to be histories,
say they came from Skandia.
And you can still read in not
very old textbooks, oh, the
Visigoths came from Skandia.
And then they went here, and
then they went there, and
they're migrating all round.
And you have little arrows
that show their progress.
You're not supposed
to do that.
I'm not sure what you're
supposed to do though, as a
substitute.
And as always with historically
misleading
things, once you get rid of the
misleading thing, you're
kind of helpless if you're
trying to teach this.
So I'm asking you to look at
this really closely and not
take it seriously.
I'm asking you to memorize
everywhere they went, but not
to tell anybody.
Once they enter the Empire then
those arrows start to
make sense.
We know that the Visigoths were
in the Balkans at the
time of the battle of
Adrianople in 278.
[correction: 378]
We know that they sacked
Rome in 410.
We know that they go down to
Italy to try to get to the
granaries of North Africa.
We know they discover, "OMG, I
can't build a boat," so then
they come up the other
side of Italy.
They settle in southern
France.
They're kicked out of southern
France by the Franks
for the most part.
And they settle in Spain, where
the Arabs get them.
Four weeks from now, I think.
So the arrows are not completely
deceptive, and
that's why I've given
these to you.
And it's hard to tell which
arrows apply to which tribes,
so hence map two.
Map two, a lot calmer.
This is the situation in 506.
Why 506?
Because in that year the Franks,
whom we're going to be
following more closely, the
Merovingian Franks defeat the
Visigoths and start pushing them
out of southern France.
So this is a map, I guess,
before that defeat.
You see the Visigoths in
southern France and
northeastern Spain with
the Basques kind
of in between them.
So this is the situation
in 500.
There's no more Roman Empire
of the West. Or there is a
fictitious Roman Empire of the
West. All of these people to
varying degrees--
well, not all of them, most of
them-- acknowledge some kind
of suzerainty of
Constantinople.
You'll read about Clovis, King
of the Franks in the beginning
of the 6th century, who gets
some sort of gift from the
emperor Anastasius in
Constantinople.
A letter of appointment, some
robes, various trinkets, and,
according to Gregory of Tours,
the historian of Clovis, the
title of consul And he is
very pleased with this.
He dons these robes.
He scatters coins just like
a newly appointed emperor.
But is he obeying the
emperor Anastasius?
Did the emperor Anastasius start
sending orders to him?
Or have any kind of
administration?
No.
This is really just symbolic.
We will talk about the
relationship between the
Eastern empire and the
barbarians, because it's going
to change in the sixth century
as the Eastern empire fends
off its opponents and becomes
more concerned to take back as
much as possible of the
lost Western empire.
In the year 500, the most
impressive of these barbarians
would've been the Ostrogoths
because they are occupying
Italy, which is the most Roman,
the most prosperous,
the most intact economically and
culturally of the former
Roman Empire of the West.
The Ostrogoths had
been in the--
if you look at the arrows, they
had been maybe in the
Crimean area, around
the Black Sea.
They came into the Balkans.
They tried to attack
Constantinople in the late
fifth century, and they
were defeated.
And they were encouraged to
move into Italy by the
Byzantine emperor to get rid
of Odoacer, that military
leader whose takeover of Italy
in 476 is conventionally
understood to be the end of the
Roman Empire in the West.
The Ostrogoths had an
impressive ruler named
Theodoric.
And they ruled from Ravenna, the
old last Roman capital in
northeastern Italy.
And the tomb of Theodoric can
still be seen in Ravenna.
Very impressive monument.
Roman education survived
in Italy.
It would reach its last
flowering with two figures: I
mentioned one of them last
time, Boethius and
Cassiodorus.
These are two key figures
in the preservation
of classical learning.
Boethuis, not perhaps literally
the last person in
the west who knew Greek, but
certainly the last person who
tried to make Greek knowledge
known to people who could only
read in Latin.
He conceived the project of
translating all of Plato and
Aristotle into Latin.
He started by doing a kind
of introductory textbook.
Like a lot of great projects,
this one was not completed.
In fact, this one barely got off
the ground because he was
accused by Theodoric of
conspiring with the Byzantine
Empire, the Eastern Roman
Empire, to overthrow him.
He was imprisoned for a year.
In prison he wrote one of the
most magnificent works of
philosophy, of why we are
alive and why we die.
The Consolation of Philosophy.
And then he was executed.
Cassiodorus lived
to be ninety.
So one of the differences
between these two figures of
the last gasp of Roman culture
in Italy is Cassiodorus's
relative longevity.
They're both figures of
the sixth century.
Boethius dies in the 530s,
Cassiodorus much, much later.
Cassiodorus also conceives of a
program of education, but it
is more oriented towards
Latin learning.
And Cassiodorus in some way is
the founder, or at least the
transmitter to us, of the idea
of the liberal arts.
Cassiodorus is a religious
figure.
Boethius is a Christian and he
wrote on Christian topics, but
The Consolation of Philosophy,
interestingly enough, is a
stoical work, has very little
explicitly about Christianity.
Cassiodorus, on the other hand,
is the guy who invented
the idea that monks should
copy manuscripts.
That the preserve of culture,
the place where it seeks
refuge and is protected in
barbarian times, should be
monasteries.
This seems so self-evident
to us.
Because if there's one thing
we know about monasteries,
it's guys hunched over and
writing stuff and the
preservation of learning.
But, in fact, monasteries
start out as just
anti-intellectual institutions
where you pray and you don't
spend a lot of time
reading, let alone
copying, let alone thinking.
You're supposed to
have visions.
You're supposed to
be inspired.
You're supposed to fast
and become ecstatic.
It's Cassiodorus who conceives
of this as a contemplative and
learned project.
The liberal arts means here
things that are not
immediately practically
useful, but that help
illuminate the person seeking
after knowledge.
And what kind of knowledge is a
person seeking after in the
6th century A.D.?
They're seeking after knowledge
of God and knowledge
of the divine.
Why not just read the Bible?
I'm sure many of you have read
the Bible or read parts of it.
The Bible is not an immediately
evident document
in terms of its view of the
world is total, but it's full
of mysteries.
It's full of obscurities.
It's a strange work that
requires knowledge and
explication.
Or to celebrate divine services,
for example,
requires a certain kind
of knowledge.
To know when Easter is.
To know the phases
of the moon.
To know what day it is.
These monks, or just anybody out
in the countryside, can't
just look at their phone and
see what time it is.
There's a need for some
practical knowledge, but that
involves abstract concepts
like the
movements of the planets.
This is what the liberal arts
are and this is what's being
preserved in the Ostrogothic
kingdom.
But the fate of Boethius shows
you the sort of duality of the
barbarian patronage
of culture.
On the one hand, the Ostrogoths
in Italy are as
civilized as these groups get.
On the other hand, of course,
Boethius is executed.
On the third hand, you didn't
have to be a barbarian to
execute people.
After all, Seneca was forced
to commit suicide by Nero.
So the fate of intellectuals
in the Roman Empire is not
necessarily so much better than
the fate of intellectuals
in the barbarian kingdoms.
The thing about the
intellectuals in the barbarian
kingdoms is they're
very few of them.
Seneca's a great man.
It's too bad that he died.
We could have had more works.
But there were lots of
other philosophers.
There were lots of other
playwrights.
Boethuis we can say--
Boethius and Cassiodorus, maybe,
are the two smartest
people in the sixth century,
judging by what they had
access to, what they read,
how they wrote.
And that is scary.
If you can say that Isidore of
Seville is the smartest man of
the seventh century.
Or Bede and Alcuin are
the smartest men
of the eighth century.
It's not just a compliment
to them.
If you're rated like the
eighteenth best tennis player
in the United States, that's a
tremendous accomplishment.
But presumably, there are 200
tennis players who are ranked.
And behind them there
are 10,000
very good tennis players.
But what if you were the number
one tennis player in
the country, and there
was no number four?
No number four through
one hundred million.
Tennis would be an
endangered game.
It would mean a lot, but
supposing nobody followed
tennis anymore?
I don't know enough about
antiquated games, but some
medieval game that only five
people know how to play.
I could be the fourth ranked.
But here we're not talking
about sports,
important though they are.
We're talking about the
fundamental aspects of
knowledge.
Theodoric.
Theodoric is a great ruler, but
he had a problem that is
typical of many of these
barbarian groups: He had to
hold his minority together.
The thing that made Italy
the wealthiest, the most
important, the biggest prize
for the barbarians, is its
Roman population, its Roman
wealth, the preservation of
its cities.
But that also meant that the
Ostrogoths were a tiny
proportion of the total
population.
He needs to hold them together,
but he also needs to
mollify the Romans.
So it's a dangerous place
for barbarian rulers.
Odoacer had already
been overthrown.
It's too valuable to
the Eastern Empire.
And indeed after Theodoric
died in 535, very shortly
thereafter the Byzantine Empire,
the Eastern Roman
Empire, would invade Italy and
devastate it in the course of
conquering it in a twenty
years' war.
Now if you look at the map
again and turn to North
Africa, you'll see we've got
the Vandals in what's now
Tunisia and eastern Algeria.
And then Moorish kingdom
and Roman Empire.
Ignore Roman Empire.
I don't know what they're
talking about.
Moorish kingdoms, what
does that mean?
We don't really know who these
people are either.
They're not invaders.
They're desert peoples who have
now taken over what was
formerly the Roman Empire, and
they're pressing the Vandals.
The Vandals were less
accommodating than the
Ostrogoths.
They were more fiercely Arian.
They persecuted the elite
of the Roman population,
including the Roman bishops.
But they were very
effective rulers.
They had a navy.
They were able to plunder
Rome several
times in the 5th century.
But they were beleaguered by
these Moorish groups, in other
words native peoples of the
North African desert.
And so by 506, their
kingdom has shrunk.
They were also a minority in
what had been a very populous
part of the Roman Empire.
And they tended to fight
among each other.
They had internecine feuds.
And so we're talking about
things that are common to many
of these barbarian kingdoms.
Disorganization.
Internal fighting.
Alien religious beliefs,
particularly the Arian heresy.
And once they've done the
plundering, inability really
to start making the economy
work very effectively.
The Vandals would be driven
out of North Africa, or
obliterated actually, by the
Eastern Roman Empire, in the
late 520s, early 530s.
Now I'm not going to go through
every one of these,
but I want to give you some
examples of accommodation.
Go up to the British Isles.
You'll see it says British
kingdoms, that means Celtic
kingdoms whose remnants would
later be Wales, Scotland.
And then the Anglo-Saxon
kingdoms. The Anglo-Saxons are
invaders who come from
the continent
beginning in the 440s.
This is the first place
that Rome abandons.
Here it looks more like a
conventional invasion.
The invaders come and the Romans
pull back their troops
because they're afraid that Gaul
is going to fall next.
And this is an island where the
Roman impress, the Roman
impact, was less.
There isn't a large Roman
majority and a
small German minority.
There is a Celtic majority that
blends with the invaders
or that seeks refuge in these
independent British kingdoms,
as they're called on the
map, to the west.
We don't know very much about
what's going on in Britain at
this time because more than
Vandal North Africa, more than
Ostrogothic Italy, the
past is obliterated.
There's very little Latin
being written.
We have very little knowledge
of what is going on.
So this is at one extreme
of what might be called
Barbarization verses
Roman permanence.
We're going to be talking about
the Franks later and
we're going to talk a little bit
about the Burgundians in
closing today.
But this leaves really
among the
important groups the Visigoths.
The Visigoths, the people who
in a way started this with
their invasions of the Balkans
in the late 4th century.
In 506 they control much of
France, the south and the west
particularly, and are trickling
into Spain.
We will be following, in reading
Gregory of Tours, the
tremendous success of the Franks
against the Visigoths.
And so the Visigoths
will be pushed out.
What about the Burgundians?
You've read the Burgundian
Code--
anything strike you about it?
Spencer?
Spencer: Mainly it focused on
differences between different
classes and emphasized the free
men versus the slaves.
Burgundians versus Romans,
et cetera.
PROFESSOR: Very status oriented.
STUDENT: I didn't realize
there was
so much hair pulling.
PROFESSOR: Yeah, why?
What's that all about?
Yeah?
STUDENT: Well, it talked about
the-- in the book it talked
about how long hair became
like a status symbol.
PROFESSOR: Yes.
So the question was, what is
all this hair pulling?
It's a status symbol.
We'll see that the Merovingian
kings wear long hair,
specially long hair.
And when they're finally deposed
by the Carolingians,
that hair is cut.
Now of course, all their hair
is cut, they're put in
monasteries.
And monks are what's called
"tonsured." If they're not
completely bald, they at
least are pretty near.
Like many barbarian, so-called
barbarian, people, or like
many people period, they're
certain signs
of prestige, symbols.
The Burgundian Code is drawn
up between 483 and 532.
It's drawn up in different
stages.
The Burgundians were closer
to [correction: "than"]
the Ostrogoths in degree
of Romanization.
They're a group that wants to be
Roman, or at least accepted
by the Romans.
They write their own law code in
Latin, like the Visigoths,
for example.
They also write a sort of law
code for the Roman population.
This law code is aware of
disputes between Romans and
Burgundians.
And if each has a different kind
of law, then how do you
settle a problem that arises
between members of both
communities?
The Burgundian law
in itself shows a
lot of Roman influence.
For example, in chapter eighteen
you've seen this
title "Of things that happen by
chance" and probably didn't
seem very dramatic.
If any animal by chance or any
dog by bite causes death to a
man, we order that among
Burgundians the ancient rule
of blame be removed
henceforth.
This is an interesting
question.
If my dog bites you and you
die, am I responsible?
Is your brother going
to have to kill me?
That's what the Burgundian
tradition would have been.
But here they say if it's an
accident, then your brother
can't kill me.
This is the difference between
-- this is a tricky problem.
Those of you who have the good
fortune to go to law school
are going to study this
first year: torts.
A tort is a so-called civil
wrong as opposed to a crime.
A crime is where I kill
you because I want to.
A tort is I leave a roller skate
out on the sidewalk, you
trip and die.
I'm not going to be considered
in the same league as someone
who poisoned you, but
that roller skate
shouldn't be there.
And of course this is
a crucial thing.
For example, I've learned,
fortunately not from
experience, but from neighbors
after Hurricane Irene, that if
a tree in my yard falls on your
house, I'm not to blame.
Your insurance is going
to have to cover that.
I'm really sorry about
that tree.
But if you warned me, "I don't
like the look of that
tree in your yard.
It's leaning over like this.
I'm afraid in the next storm
it's going to fall in on your
house," and I don't do
anything, then my
understanding is that I'm
liable for negligence.
This was a present and
obvious nuisance.
It was an obvious threat, and
my neighbor called my
attention to it.
And I didn't do anything.
So next time it storms and your
house is threatened by
somebody else's tree, just as
the wind starts to blow go
next door and say, you know, I
don't like the look of that
tree on your property.
You better do something.
These are real legal
questions.
And they are handled in here
with some sophistication.
On the other hand, there
is vengeance.
It's OK to practice vengeance.
But there are some
limitations.
For example, if I kill you, your
relatives can kill me,
but they can't just
kill my cousin.
This is sort of
individual-directed and not
clan-directed vengeance.
There's a lot of talk about
compensation and wergeld for
victims. How much you pay.
Whether you grab them
by the hair.
Whether you cut off
which finger.
Whether they were free or slave.
Whether they were a
skilled artisan or a serf.
I love title ten.
"If anyone kills a slave,
barbarian by birth, a trained
house servant or messenger, let
him compound 60 solidi.
But 200 solidi if the slave is
a skilled goldsmith." 40
solidi for a carpenter,
and so forth.
If you cut off someone's arm,
it's half of their wergeld.
Wergeld is like murder.
Their murder value.
So I have a murder value
of 100 solidi.
Cut off an arm, you've got
to pay me 50 solidi.
This seems pretty crude,
doesn't it?
How does it strike you?
Yes?
STUDENT: Yeah, it does seem
crude, but I think it gives a
solution to something that could
cause a total outbreak,
a civil war.
PROFESSOR: It is a
maintenance of peace.
And what about victims'
compensation?
In the Western legal tradition,
if you injure me,
it's a crime against the peace,
and the state punishes
the perpetrator.
Only relatively recently has
this notions of victims'
rights, victims' compensation,
been entered.
Which is like a reversion back
to the notion that the crime
really injures not the state or
the king or the peace that
we all take for granted,
but the
individual who is affected.
But what makes it seem
crude is the
specificity of the offenses.
If you look at the Connecticut
Criminal Code, it's not quite
so precise about hair pulling.
If anyone seizes a freeman by
the hair, the fine is greater
if he's seized with two
hands than one.
Maybe that has to
do with intent.
One arm might be instinct.
I'm pulling your hair.
But two hands argues of serious
intent to do harm.
Or it's more humiliating.
This is a culture in which
there's an awful lot of shame
and compensation for
public shaming.
A lot of questions of
personal status.
In title four about theft, if
a slave commits a theft he's
either beaten or killed,
end of story.
Freemen, that is to say people
who are not slaves, pay fines
and compensation.
It's a violent society.
Course all criminal codes show
various forms of violence.
There's a lot of mutilation.
There are a lot of assaults
on women.
Compensation for assaults on
free women are paid to the
women themselves, but a native
freeman who assaults a
maid-servant must
pay the master.
Maid-servant, as a slave, is
regarded as a commodity.
And then finally, it's a society
in which, at least
according to the official law
code, men are more valued than
women, or men are less
regulated than women.
If a man breaks a marriage, in
title thirty four, he's fined
if he goes and runs off
with another woman.
If a woman goes off and runs off
with another man, she's to
be smothered to death.
On that enlightened
note, we'll leave
the Burgundian Code.
And indeed we're going to leave
the barbarians only for
a little while.
Next week we're going to talk
about the Eastern Roman Empire
and why it survived and even
why it flourished.
