Grants of property and protection
The greatest of the formularies, the early seventh-century ‘formulary of
Marculf’ is divided into two parts, of which the second contains
fifty-two cartae pagenses, the deeds or ‘acts’ of local landowners. Lords
grant lands to churches, sometimes being given back life-leases of these
or other estates. Husbands and wives settle lands on each other to
provide for the longer-lived of them, and fathers make over lands to
their sons. Favoured grandsons, or strangers, are adopted as heirs. A
daughter is given an equal share in a paternal inheritance along with her
brothers, against ‘the ancient but reprehensible’ custom of the Franks.
Kinsmen reach an agreement about the inheritance of family lands,
without the compulsion of a court (non a iudiciaria potestate coacti).
Dowries are given and wills made according to Roman law, and feuds
are settled by a formula providing for the payment of compensation for
homicide under the witness of churchmen and nobles. Several items
relate to serfdom and the sale or emancipation of serfs. There are letters
of divorce (libelli repudii), of commendation to bishops and abbots, and
of Christmas and Easter greetings to fellow-bishops and kings. Besides
forms for the entry of grants in the municipal books and for the read-
ing of grants and wills ‘according to the customs of the Romans’, there
is one to authorize a person to act as attorney for a litigant in a
property case heard in the royal palace.^11
This second part of Marculf’s formulary harks back to Roman forms:
the first part shows that the barbarian kings had themselves come to
provide a sanction for property arrangements, and were moulding
Roman procedures into a new judicial and political order. Royal
charters were often sought not as gifts of land but as grants of the
political protection of one’s property and the judicial privileges within
them which only the king could confer. The first ‘style’ of all is in fact a
bishop’s grant of ‘a privilege of liberty’ to an abbey, which the king then
sanctions in the second style. The bishop promises not to intervene in
the affairs of the monastery except to do the things which only he can:
to confer holy orders and bestow holy oil, consecrate altars, and install
a new abbot after his free election by the community—all of which he
must do without payment. The king’s grant is addressed both to the
fathers of the Church and to his count and other agents, now and in the
future. Bishops and archdeacons and their subordinates are forbidden to
exercise any powers in the monastery beyond those specified; and no
‘judicial power’ (judiciaria potestas) is henceforth to hear cases (causas)
Grants of property and protection 13(^11) Formulae, 70–105 (Marculf II, nos. 1–15, 17, 18, 22, 28–50); cf. Wallace-Hadrill,
Long-Haired Kings, 4–7.