WERCHIN, JEAN DE
(ca. 1375–1415). Seneschal of Hainaut. Werchin is cited in the Livre des faits de Jacques
de Lalaing as an especially valiant knight of the region. He was also sufficiently versed in
poetry to be a minister of the cour amoureuse founded in Paris in 1401. He was the
author of a long allegorical poem, the Songe de la barge (1404; ca. 3,500 lines), and a
series of ballades exchanged with his squire, Guillebert de Lannoy. His exploits were
celebrated in a ballade by Christine de Pizan, who also dedicated to him her Livre des
trois jugemens. After his death at the Battle of Agincourt, he was nostalgically
remembered by Achille Caulier in the Hôpital d’amour in the company of Tristan and
Lancelot.
Charity Cannon Willard
Piaget, Arthur, ed. “Le songe de la barge de Jean de Werchin, sénéchal de Hainaut.” Romania
38(1909):71–110. [Partial edition, with summaries of omitted episodes.]
——. “Ballades de Guillebert de Lannoy et Jean de Werchin.” Romania 39(1910):324–68.
Willard, Charity Cannon. “Jean de Werchin, Seneschal of Hai-naut: Reader and Writer of Courtly
Literature.” In Courtly Literature: Culture and Contexts, ed. Keith Busby and Erik Cooper.
Philadelphia: Benjamins, 1990, pp. 595–603.
WERGELD
. Germanic law codes required a sum known as “wergeld” (literally, “man money”) to be
paid to the relatives (or in the case of a slave, the master) of one who was killed. The
amount of the wergeld varied with the legal status, ethnic background, occupation, sex,
and age of the victims, thus representing their social standing.
The taking of life was not technically a violation of Germanic laws and the victim’s
relatives could seek an eye-for-an-eye vengeance, which often led to a bloody cycle of
retaliatory deaths. Payment of the wergeld to the kinsfolk of the victim provided an
honorable compensation for the death, and a vendetta could thus be avoided. However, a
killer could refuse to pay the wergeld or the victim’s kin could refuse to accept it, and
either refusal would initiate the blood feud.
Exact values varied among the law codes. In the Salic Law, the wergeld of the typical
freeman (leudis) normally was 200 solidi, that of a member of the king’s entourage was
600, but a slave’s was only thirty-five. In the Burgun-dian Code, nobles had a wergeld of
300 solidi, lower classes 150, and slaves thirty. (By comparison, the Ripuarian Code
equated the value of a stallion with seven solidi, a cow with one, and a sword with three.)
The payment of one’s wergeld or a portion of it could sometimes be imposed as a
penalty for certain crimes.
Steven Fanning
The Encyclopedia 1843