Talk:Germanic law

Move proposal
Should this be moved to simply Germanic law? Srnec 01:59, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

"I think it's better to keep it as Early Germanic law, so that legal codes of modern Germanic peoples can be treated separately should the need arise. 128.187.0.164 01:30, 4 October 2006 (UTC)"

Where is Anglo-Saxon law?
Why isn't Anglo-Saxon law included among the list of Early Germanic law. It's actually in a Germanic language, rather than Latin, and there's already a Wikipedia article on it: Anglo-Saxon_law 128.187.0.164 01:30, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Homosexuality
First of all the word homosexuality and our modern concept of it did not exist prior to the 1880'th. That is why I use the term "samesex erotisism" below. The translation of "corpore infames" as "unnatural prostitutes" is an anacronism. The argument of branding samesex erotisism as unnatural was mainly put forward by the christian church, long time after Tacitus. There is nothing to surgest that Tacitus or the germans about whom he wrote thought of samesex erotisism as either unnatural or "dishonorable". The latter being the correct translation of the latin word "infames." The sentence "corpore infames" means "those who has dishonored their body." It is placed in a long line of words discribing unwanted behaveour in battle. There is no reason why a sexual practis would suddenly appear in such a context. The grecco-roman view on samesex erotisism may or may not have been the same amongst the germanic peoples. We don't know. and Taitus text doesn't sayanything about it. The grecco-roman view on samesex erotisism would have been Tacitus background. To him there would have been nothing "unnatural" or "dishonorable" about buggering an other man. And even though the one being buggerd would have been rediculed if he was a real roman he-man there where no laws against it and there is nothing to surgest that Tacitus thought it was a problem. The assosiation of "corpore infames" with homosexuality is a 19'th century christian prejudice. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.107.12.196 (talk) 11:51, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
 * You can argue your own POV based on original research til the cows come home, but ultimately you're going to need some RSS we can attribute such a POV to. Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 16:48, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Rouche quotes
Rouche seems to have a political agenda maligning the oral judges system, in favor of a more rationalistic constructivist one. If you look at the analogous lawspeaker article for medieval scandinavian law there seems to be no indication that these people were viewed as unpredictably terrifying or overly subjective. The quotes should be removed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.24.134.170 (talk) 16:21, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Needs native copy-editing
Someone here has misunderstood the use of the progressive tenses in English. Wegesrand (talk) 09:31, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

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Potentially useful sources
Possibly useful--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:49, 9 March 2020 (UTC)
 * (Seems to be based on Wormald)
 * Wormald, P., Legal Culture in the Early Medieval West: Law as Text, Image and Experience (London, 1999) https://books.google.be/books?id=HJiqx9xxgi8C
 * https://www.academia.edu/12856643/Nijdam_J.A._Indigenous_Or_Universal_A_Comparative_Perspective_On_Medieval_Frisian_Compensation_Law_in_P._Andersen_et_al._eds._How_Nordic_are_the_Nordic_Laws_Ten_years_after._Proceedings_of_the_Tenth_Carlsberg_Conference_on_Medieval_Legal_History_2013_Copenhagen_2014_161_181 (Comments on Wormald and after)
 * https://www.academia.edu/12856643/Nijdam_J.A._Indigenous_Or_Universal_A_Comparative_Perspective_On_Medieval_Frisian_Compensation_Law_in_P._Andersen_et_al._eds._How_Nordic_are_the_Nordic_Laws_Ten_years_after._Proceedings_of_the_Tenth_Carlsberg_Conference_on_Medieval_Legal_History_2013_Copenhagen_2014_161_181 (Comments on Wormald and after)

Rewrite
you've done some work on Germanic law. Any interest in helping here? Also, I agree with your question way back when. This article should be at Germanic law. I'm not aware of any scholarship that calls it "Early".--Ermenrich (talk) 16:04, 27 January 2022 (UTC)


 * I'll see if I can help. Srnec (talk) 03:59, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I tried moving the article today and was unable to. Do you suppose we can ask an admin such as or should we start a move request?--Ermenrich (talk) 14:10, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Done!--Berig (talk) 14:19, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Germatic tribes and legal development
Suggestion 196.21.236.5 (talk) 12:13, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

Recent additions
I've reverted recent changes by an IP because they changed what Schmidt-Wiegand says to exclude a Roman origin of wergild. There were other additions, however. I've so far been unable to identify "Lenski 2022/2023" (either two citations or a single citation but with the wrong years in one or both places), but Bothe, Esders and Nijdam 2021 is [this https://brill-com.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/display/title/33000?rskey=fSnDAV&result=1], available at Brill. I can't say the citation it was used for is that significant, but the book, entirely on wergild and recent, could be useful if properly cited.-- Ermenrich (talk) 14:06, 6 March 2024 (UTC)


 * , while I certainly do not want to discourage an actual scholar of this material from editing this page, I notice you seem to be relying on work you yourself have published. Please be aware of WP:conflict of interest and also our policies on WP:original research and WP:synthesis. We need to summarize all views, including ones you may disagree with (that wergild may have Roman origins, for instance). To make a statement such as "most scholars believe", we need an actual source that says that (WP:RS/AC). A good person to talk to about these issues would be . I'm also a Germanic-adjacent scholar, but I haven't done much work on anything I myself have published on, so I'll be less help on that.
 * I'd also suggest adding more detail to the frankly miserable article weregild rather than here.--Ermenrich (talk) 15:11, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I have researched and written about these questions extensively. When I cite my own work, it will carry readers to additional primary and secondary sources on these matters. I am well within the limits of the WP:conflict of interest standards.
 * You indicated earlier that Schmidt-Wiegand makes a case that Wergild may have Roman origins, but I read her article on Wergild this morning and see that as a misrepresentation of what it says. The fact is that there is no scholarship giving a credible Roman Law origin for Wergild - certainly not Schmidt-Wiegand. If you read to the end of the Wergild article, she points to the commonality with Icelandic law to indicate it is indeed a Germanic tradition. If you can point to a secondary source that credibly argues for a Roman law origin, you should cite it in the WP article.
 * Meanwhile, as constructed, the article relies heavily on the 'Provincial Roman Law' argument - which, you will know, is entirely a scholarly construct of the 20th century. Point me to any ancient or medieval text that represents itself as 'Provincial Roman Law'. It is a bogus idea, calqued on work by scholars of eastern Roman law (where we do have evidence for provincial law) and largely propagated by Levy - who himself was an ongoing supporter of the idea of Germanic law, even if he felt the concept had been abused in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
 * It would be nice if I knew your identity rather than a pseudonym. That makes it difficult to engage with you as a real interlocutor. Noellenski (talk) 15:25, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm not accusing you of a conflict of interest, merely making sure you're aware of the matter. Not all Wikipedians are OK with scholars adding citations to their own work.
 * As to Schmidt Wiegand, she says: Zu den noch nicht restlos geklärten Fragen in der wiss. Forsch. gehört die nach dem Ursprung der Kompositionsregelung: röm. Vorbild oder traditionelles Verfahren? This is a statement that scholars are divided on the issue, which must be reflected as such in the article. Schmidt-Wiegand does indeed argue for one side or another, but we cannot take that as the definitive position on the issue. Camby, for instance, would disagree.
 * As to "provincial Roman law" - we have to reflect all scholarly opinions. If you have scholarship (not primary sources) that disagrees, we should add it to the article. But simply saying that it's not in the primary sources doesn't work. We need WP:SECONDARY work. It's my impression that if scholars support "Germanic law" as a concept now, it's usually in a very limited fashion. You cite the work of Esders, Bothe and Nijdam, for instance: notice that in his chapter Esders is very careful not to conclude that wergeld is "Germanic"?
 * Wikipedia works on anonymity. I've considered revealing my identity a few times, but I've heard lots of horror stories of people being harrassed, and I've edited in topic areas like Russia-Ukraine or Huns (which attracts a lot of crazy nationalists from Hungary or Turkey) that I've never actually done it. All discussion on articles content should happen here, but if you're really interested I can always write you an email at your Yale address. I don't claim to be an expert on late antique law, though: I'm a scholar of mostly high medieval German literature, and not at Yale but at a second tier state school. I've worked some on marriage and marriage law, which is how I came to the topic.
 * Anyway, we should try to work collaboratively rather than oppositionally. Discussion on the talk page is a good way to clear misunderstandings up.--Ermenrich (talk) 15:35, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I should add: many of these topics are very poorly handled on Wikipedia because no one cares about them. Someone copied the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica and forgot about them, or worse, just wrote a lot of nationalist-tinged nonsense. I've worked on adding more modern scholarship here but ran out of steam after a while. There are tons of articles that need work though. The aforementioned weregeld, for instance, but many others associated with what has traditionally been called Germanic law. If you, as someone who actually knows the field, wants to improve them, you'll be welcomed here with open arms.--Ermenrich (talk) 15:40, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks for these clarifications. I appreciate your positions, and your adherence to the Wikipedia guidelines - which is important. I'm in the midst of working on these questions now and find that a new orthodoxy is settling in (not fully settled) which is built on a lot of not very good scholarship. The biggest problem (although there are many) is that much of the revisionist work, which leans heavily on Roman origins for Germanic law concepts and forms, is being published by people who know the Germanic law sources reasonably well, but they do not know Roman law well at all. There is also the overlay of political concern because of the horrors to which Germanische Altertumskunde contributed in the mid-twentieth century, which makes many contemporary scholars allergic to the idea of a 'Germanic law'. But I think this is doing real violence to the study of late antiquity and the early middle ages by clouding our understanding of the very different social and legal patterns that emerge in the post-Roman west. That said, my approaches have not yet created a new consensus, and WP is after something approaching settled opinion. I agree that we should collaborate rather than oppose each other. I really don't have time to get pulled into WP writing - because it gets little or no acknowledgement in evaluative processes at Yale. But I am also aware of the tremendous impact of WP on the collective understanding of any given question. So I'm happy to work together with you to make this and perhaps other articles better. I hope you don't have issues with the changes I have made to the article as they stand. On Schmidt-Wiegand regarding the Roman or Germanic roots of Wergeld, I hope I've captured it: she may leave open the debate, but she presents no credible evidence for Roman origins, nor does she cite anyone who does. And don't think you can find anything that will, but if you do, you should of course put it in the article and cite it. Noellenski (talk) 16:23, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
 * And, yes, please do send me an email at my university address so we can continue the dialogue. Noellenski (talk) 16:25, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I just made a few more changes in an attempt to make things more accurate, always with an eye to generality of argument. I will probably keep working in my spare time, but I have lots of other commitments. Again, please feel free to write me on email if you'd like to continue the conversation. Noellenski (talk) 18:41, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I have no issues with the changes you've made! I sent you an email.--Ermenrich (talk) 20:23, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I actually do have a slight objection/question. You added More recent work has shown that the range of enumerated offenses for personal injury is generally uniform across the codes and that the compositions mirror one another closely if calculated as a percentage of an individual's Wergild value, indications of a shared tradition. This is cited to you - I've only skimmed the chapter, but I don't recall you referring to other scholars who share this opinion. If there aren't any/you don't cite them, we had better change it to "Noel Lenski, however, argues" or something to that effect. And for purposes of WP:DUE, we should make sure that your opinion is not given undue weight in our summary. Such is the way of Wikipedia.--Ermenrich (talk) 01:21, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
 * While I won't accuse of deliberate self-interest, the reality remains that citing his own work comes off a little egotistical—no matter how prestigious one's credentials—especially since in this latter instance, I am not sure his observation represents a widely shared opinion (if it is, please cite some other scholars). The only thing that remotely comes to mind for me is the manner in which Lombard law from the likes of Liutprand was aped by the Franks when it came to Wergild. As a fellow scholar of the period, I welcome another legitimate academic to the articles covering Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages...but hoping to see little more objectivity. If consensus cannot be found, then what  proposed in terms of clarification is absolutely necessary. Otherwise, it appears very "fringe" and not in keeping with the rules of the project.--Obenritter (talk) 18:57, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Section on the individual Leges
I think that this section needs drastic trimming and rewriting with more recent sources. I'm not even sure we need to summarize the Leges at all. Each of them have their own page, after all.--Ermenrich (talk) 13:43, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

Further topics to add here
Things that should probably be discussed here in some capacity: I bring these things up not because scholarship necessarily believes they are "Germanic" nowadays, but because they have historically been assumed to be Germanic and some readers might expect them here. Their "Germanicness" would be a subject of the section.
 * 1) the ordeal
 * 2) kingship
 * 3) clan
 * 4) retinue?
 * 5) freedom/slavery?
 * 6) peace/ feud ?
 * 7) oath
 * 8) the "tribe/gens"
 * 9) "personality of law"

What else? I wonder if a brief section on the Scandinavian laws wouldn't be in order as well.--Ermenrich (talk) 15:28, 7 March 2024 (UTC)