II. THE DIVISION OF CLASSES AS SHOWN BY THE AMOUNT OF THE WERGELD.
Turning now to the amount of the wergeld, something may be learned of the division of classes under the Lex Salica.
Tit. XLI. fixes the amount of the wergeld of the typical freeman who is described as ‘the Frank or the barbarian man who lives under the Lex Salica.’
[Sidenote: The wergeld of the freeman living under Salic law 200 solidi.]
The amount, as throughout the Lex are all the payments, is stated in so many denarii and so many solidi--8,000 denarii, _i.e._ 200 solidi. And that the Frank or barbarian living under the Lex Salica was the typical freeman is shown by the title _De debilitatibus_,[106] which fixes the payment for the destruction of an eye, hand, or foot at 100 solidi. Half the wergeld is the highest payment for eye, hand, and foot ever exacted by the Continental laws, and 100 solidi certainly cannot apply to any grade of persons with a lower wergeld than 200 solidi.
Si quis ingenuo franco aut barbarum, qui legem Salega vivit, occiderit, cui fuerit adprobatum viii. _M._ den. qui fac. sol. cc. culp. jud.
If any one shall kill a freeman--a Frank or barbarian man who lives under the Lex Salica--let him whose guilt is proved be judged to be liable for viii. M. denarii, which make cc. solidi.
As this clause probably dates before the issue of Merovingian solidi of diminished weight, the 200 solidi of the wergeld may be taken to have been at the date of the law 200 gold solidi of Imperial standard.
So that the wergeld of the Frank or the free ‘barbarus living under the Lex Salica’ originally, when paid in gold solidi, was neither more nor less than the normal wergeld of a heavy gold mina.
[Sidenote: Officials had a triple wergeld.]
We learn from clause 2 of the same title that if the homicide was aggravated by concealment of the corpse the composition was increased to 24,000 denarii or 600 solidi, and that the wergeld of a person ‘in truste dominica’ was again 600 solidi. The Royal Official thus, as in several other laws, had a triple wergeld.
Then lastly under the same title are three clauses describing the wergelds of the ‘Romanus homo conviva Regis,’ as 300 solidi, of the ‘Romanus homo possessor’ as 100 solidi, and of the ‘Romanus tributarius’ in some texts 45, and in others 63, 70, and 120 solidi. In Codex 10 the ‘Romanus possessor’ is described as the man who in the pagus in which he lives _res proprias possidet_.