[Footnote 82: _Lex Visig._, III, 6, c. 2 (adultery); _Lex Burgund._, 34, 3 (_adultera_, _maleficia_, _sepulcrorum violatrix_): FREISEN, _op. cit._, 779.]
[Footnote 83: _Pact. Alam._, III, 3; _Lex Bajuw._, VII, 14; _Lex Burg._, tit. 34, c. 2; _Lex Vis._, III 6, c. 2; FREISEN, _op. cit._, 779.]
Another principle of the ancient German law it is necessary to mention in order to obtain a starting-point for the measure of Christian influence. Originally, according to Wilda,[84] by the strict legal theory adultery is not a crime which a man can commit against his wife. He may be punished: indeed very generally in the folk-laws both the guilty persons may be slain when surprised by the aggrieved; but if he be punished "it is not for unfaithfulness to his wife, but for violating the rights of another husband."[85] On the other hand, for similar misconduct the woman is put to death. So "in Saxony, where the old heathen ideas survived until the forcible conversion under Charles the Great, as Boniface reports, the adulteress, stripped to the girdle, was driven out of her husband's house and whipped through the streets of the village until she died."[86]
[Footnote 84: WILDA, _Strafrecht_, 821 ff. _Cf._ WALTER, _Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte_, II, 398 ff.; GLASSON, _Hist. du droit_, I, 120.]
[Footnote 85: GEFFCKEN, _op. cit._, 33. The following provision of the old English law illustrates this principle in all its harsh reality: "If a freeman lie with a freeman's wife, let him pay for it with his wer-geld, and provide another wife with his own money, and bring her to the other." Here doubtless the guilty woman had been slain: _Laws of Æthelberht_, 31: HADDAN AND STUBBS, _Councils_, III, 45. For the same offense with an "esne's" wife, sec. 85 of the same laws requires a man to "make two-fold bot": _ibid._, III, 50. _Cf._ also secs. 10, 11: _ibid._, III, 43; CLEVELAND, _Woman under the English Law_, 9, 51 ff. (adultery and divorce).]
[Footnote 86: GEFFCKEN, _op. cit._, 33. _Cf._ in general TACITUS, _Germania_, c. 19; GRIMM, _Rechtsalt._, 454; FREISEN, _Geschichte des can. Eherechts_, 779; WEINHOLD, _Deutsche Frauen_, II, 25-27, who shows that the guilty woman's paramour might lawfully be slain by the husband when seized in the act.