Anthony House
History 230-01
Prof. Paxton
9 October 2001

Sixth Century Gaul: Its Roman and Germanic Roots

Imagine, for a moment, that you are a Roman in sixth century Gaul. The legions have been gone for decades. A Germanic king now controls the region. The Frankish King Clovis has only recently codified the legal system. How closely does your life resemble those of your ancestors a century and a half before? Are you conscious of the distinction between you and your Frankish neighbors? Have their lives changed much in the past one hundred fifty years? Looking back, a combination of the two cultures was both inevitable and obvious. Still, the interplay between the two cultural traditions was neither simple nor symmetrical. A careful reading of Lex Salica and Gregory of Tours’s The History of the Franks certainly suggests that, while the Franks assumed aspects of Roman culture, they remained a Germanic society. The two works, though vastly different in form, highlight the Germanic core of contemporary Gallic life while providing substantial evidence of Roman influence. The interplay of the two was clear at all levels of society, from family life to the administration of law—the law itself, though, gives glimpses of that interplay in many areas of life.

At the most basic level of societal organization, the family, Frankish society clearly built on its Germanic foundation. The most obvious manifestation of that foundation is the Frankish reliance on kinship groups. While genealogy and family ties were important in the Roman world, the structure and responsibilities of the extended family group in Frankish Gaul were quite distinct from those of earlier classical Gaul. A woman, for example, was not considered part of her husband’s kinship group for the purposes of the wergeld or inheritance (Lex Salica LVII). This protected her and her kinship group from being held responsible financially for actions of her husband or his kin. It also may have a connection to another disparity between Frankish and Roman family structure—for the Franks, marriage was not necessarily an indissoluble institution. Long before this time, of course, the Western Church had determined the permanence of the marital bond. In Gaul, however, "divorce" was not altogether out of the question. The law even prescribed which parent would be responsible financially for the children of a dissolved marriage. Interestingly Lex Salica linked a child more closely to its mother than its father, another distinction from Roman tradition. Other aspects of Frankish culture departed from the patriarchal norms of Roman life. For example, Lex Salica provided for a man’s daughter to inherit certain types of property, regardless of whether she had a brother (LIX). Classical family structures and customs no doubt continued among the Romans remaining in Gaul. Still, the familial norms legally set out by the Franks were clearly of Germanic origin.

In religion, too, the Germanic roots of the Franks were obvious, though as time wore on, Roman traditions gained greater prominence. The possibility of divorce is just one prominent example of Frankish religious practice differing from that of the Romans. Unlike other Germanic tribes, the Franks were never converted to Arianism, a sect of Christianity decried by the Orthodox as heretical. Still, the Franks were not in full accord with the Roman Church. Gregory recounts that Clovis "held fast to his pagan idolatries" (History II.27). Clovis’s paganism had Germanic roots, no doubt, as Christianity had long since eradicated paganism within Roman culture. Another prime example of disparity between Frankish and Roman approaches to religion comes from Lex Salica, which completely neglects to discuss the position of religious in society; they are accorded no differentiation from civilians within the wergeld system. Some kings went so far as to tax the church: "King Lothar had ordained that all the churches in his kingdom should pay a third part of their revenues to the treasury" (History IV.1). Lothar only revoked his decree in response to the vehement objections of St. Injuriosus. Still, the fact that Lothar listened to Injuriosus at all suggests at least a minimal level of respect accorded to Orthodox Christian clergy. Not all clergy were so respectable. Gregory tells the story of Cautinus, a bishop who "was often so completely fuddled with wine that it would take four men to carry him from the table" (History IV.12). Here Gregory highlights a problem caused by a quintessentially Roman form of indulgence: wine drinking. Good or bad, though, The History of the Franks suggests that Roman Catholicism overcame Germanic paganism with relative ease. Gregory’s ability to write his History from the bishopric at Tours, for example, is a commending indication that Merovingian kings accepted the role of Christianity in their kingdom regardless of whether that role was codified in law.

In The History of the Franks, Gregory’s discussion of military campaigns raises issues surrounding the role of cities in Gaul. While the Western Roman Empire had never been as urbane as its counterpart in the East, city life was further challenged by the Germanic nature of Frankish society. The laws codified by Clovis in the first decade of the sixth century ignore cities entirely. No law specifically mentions cities as distinct from the surrounding countryside. This suggests that cities had little role in contemporary Frankish life. Certainly, the Germanic heritage of the Franks is less urban than the Roman. Gregory, however, is more willing to acknowledge the role of cities in his narrative: Gundobad "marched his army against his brother Godigisel and besieged him inside his city of Vienne" (History II.33). In response Godigisel foolishly "expelled the engineer who was in charge of the aqueduct" (History II.33). Godigisel’s move proves foolish, though, since the engineer (obviously familiar with the Roman aqueduct of Vienne) helps Gundobad easily outsmart Godigisel. At other points, Germanic armies take advantage of various Roman institutions to make war. In one pact, "many sons of senatorial families were handed over in [the] exchange of hostages" (History III.15). When the Saxons appear on the scene, they pitch camp at a villa—a Roman country house (History IV.42). While the Franks waged war in a distinctly Germanic fashion, they did so through the exploitation of some of the most salient vestiges of Gaul’s Roman history.

In sixth century Gaul, Frankish law was peculiarly distinct from its Roman predecessor, and while the process of codification betrays substantial Roman influence, Lex Salica and its administration are obviously Germanic in nature. The object of Frankish law was quite distinct from its Roman counterpart. Roman law had a particular concern for private law—the law contracts, obligations, and the like. It also defined the relationship between the Roman state and its citizens in terms of mutual obligation. Frankish law did not bother itself with such things. The Lex Salica is not concerned with the relationship of the king to his subjects; nor did Frankish law make a distinction between civil and criminal law. Rather, the Lex Salica codifies the ways in which kin groups relate to one another. Under the Lex Salica, a person found guilty of committing a any crime would be forced to pay a certain fee to the victim (or the victim’s family) and a separate fee to the court. The size of those fees depended on the nature of the offence. The wergeld system dominates Frankish law. It included discrimination against Gallo-Romans: the wergeld of a free Roman in any particularly category was half that of a free Frank (Lex Salica XLI). Interestingly, though, women were literally more valuable than men in Frankish Gaul. An adult woman’s wergeld was six hundred solidi (Lex Salica XXIV); a typical adult male, on the other hand, had a wergeld of a mere two hundred solidi (XLI). Only a few crimes (such as marrying the wife of one’s father) were punishable by death by hanging. The very nature of Frankish law differed from that of Roman law. At court, Rome looked for interpretation of the written law. In the Merovingian Empire, however, courts existed for the strict business of determining guilt or innocence. Their methods of doing so, moreover, may merit the epithet "barbaric." In severe cases, for example, a free man could be expected to prove his innocence by completing some sort of inhumane ordeal. The Franks counted on God to come to the aid of the innocent party in such cases. Such customs directly contradict the rational course of Roman law’s administration. Though it defines a distinctly Germanic legal system, the Lex Salica came into being through Roman agents. Roman scribes took down the Frankish king’s law in their own language, Latin. It is almost as if the Germanic law assumed a Roman façade.

Whether in the cities or in the legal code, elements of both Roman and Germanic culture are clearly present in Gregory of Tours’s The History of the Franks and the Lex Salica. Both works, however, indicate that the Franks were a Germanic people. While they integrated many Roman attributes, their society remained a German one. As time passed, the two traditions fused together, and a distinctly Frankish culture emerged. In the meantime, Franks and Gallo-Romans maintained distinct identities, reinforced by the Lex Salica. While the Frankish rulers were eager to adopt various Roman customs, those customs did not threaten the core Germanness of their society.