Merovingian Legal Cultures

Different sources give us profoundly contradictory impressions about the nature of Merovingian legal processes, state, and society on such fundamental matters as whether feuds existed, whether legal documents mattered, and whether peacekeeping was chiefly community-driven or state-driven. This means that we should probably stop looking for one dominant legal system, which can only be done at the cost of dismissing much contradictory evidence. Instead, contemporaries, under certain circumstances, could avail themselves of a multitude of different legal reference points in order to justify their intended or past course of action. Law in the Merovingian period did not restrict or narrow people’s choices; instead, it expanded their scope for legitimate social action, offering them different possible approaches and solutions. Within this framework, what looks like profound and irreducible contradictions in the source material should be seen instead as a cultural repertoire that was all the stronger for being richer, even at the cost of consistency.