concluded (definita) by their inquisition. To have your claim that
property had been stolen ‘by evil cunning’ investigated by a royal
inquest, perhaps before specially appointed missi, was the most valuable
of privileges. The greater churches were conceded the right to have their
own ‘advocates’ to prosecute the inquests and defend their property
before missiwithout interference by the counts of the region, choosing
‘suitable’ and ‘truthful’ freemen of the neighbourhood and compelling
them to swear to the facts.^106
The verdict (veredictum: statement of truth) which was returned by
the members of the inquisition must always have been under oath; and
litigants cannot have seen much difference between having a group of
neighbours support their oaths in the time-honoured fashion and getting
them to swear to ‘what they knew to be the truth of the case’, as they
can be seen doing in inquests everywhere by the mid-ninth century.^107
Amongst jurors (i.e. oath-swearers) the distinctions between supporters,
witnesses, and judges of evidence presented to them were blurred for a
long time to come. A bishop who alleged that he had been ‘divested’
iniuste et malo ordineof lands belonging to his bishopric would give his
opponent a pledge to prove his case in court ‘by witnesses or by the
men of an inquisition’ (ad probandum per testes aut per homines
inquisicione). In this instance, it is recorded that an inquisitioof four
persons gave its verdict, to the effect that it appeared to the ‘hearers’
(auditores) that the bishop’s claim was ‘right’, and judgment was con-
sequently given in his favour.^108 The civil inquest prescribed by royal
letter became the foundation of legal procedure. The assizes or ‘sessions’
of juries instructed in the legal issues by royal writs, as they were devised
by the Angevin Henry II in the late twelfth-century and from which
grew the English common law, elaborated on this basic idea.^109
34 Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Justice
(^106) Capitularia, i. 107 (c.17), 210 (c.12); Lotharii I et Lotharii II Diplomata, ed.
T. Schieffer, MGH Diplomata Karolinorum 3 (Berlin, 1966), 68. 30 , 84. 30 , 111–12, 126.10–
15 , 131. 20 , 151. 35 , 156. 30 , 164. 25 , 165. 30 , 186.15–20, 268.5–20; Actes de Charles II le
Chauve, i. 347. 19 , ii. 336. 2 (a monastery to have advocates to inquire along with royal missi
in a specific case), 395; Ludowici Germanici [etc.] Diplomata, 89. 1 , 101. 25 (cum sacramento
inquirantur), 204. 1 , 209. 10 ; Karoli III Diplomata, 53. 20 (before the emperor himself),
78.15–30, 91. 35 , 147. 15 (cum iureiurando studiosissime fiat inquisitio, if the rights of a
bishopric are infringed), 258. 40 (cum coacto iuramento), 331. 35 ; Arnolfi Diplomata, 115 (the
advocatus of the bishop of Passau given royal authority to make inquiry cum iusticia legali et
cum populis veracibusof infringements of episcopal rights by the King Arnulf’s own men),
- 15 , 196.30.
(^107) Niermeyer, lexicon minus, sub vv. inquaestusand inquisitio(3).
(^108) For the inquisitions which the Church used also for its own disciplinary purposes and
internal dispute-settlement, see Concilia Aevi Karolini, 1, part i, ed. A. Werminghoff, MGH
Legum Sectio 3 (Hanover, 1906), 232. 5 , 479. 15 , 685. 1 , 784.15.
(^109) I Placiti del ‘Regnum Italiae’, i. 489–90 (a. 919); cf. ibid.i. 46, 71.1, 72. 6 , 73. 15 , 81. 24 ,
- 2 9, 82. 4 , 100–1 (‘Relecto hoc indiculo... breve de illis testimoniis... relegi fecit.. .’),
122, 211–15, 239–40, 352. 33 , 405. 4 , 480. 14 , 489–90 (a. 919), 565, 573, iii. 1. 1 ; Niermeyer,
lexicon minus, sub v. brevis; for examples of breviaproduced or failing to be produced to