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previous: Book VII Chapter 10 This webpage reproduces a section of Italy and Her Invaders by Thomas Hodgkin published by the Clarendon Press Oxford 1896 The text, and illustrations except as noted, are in the public domain. This page has been carefully proofread and I believe it to be free of errors. If you find a mistake though, please let me know! next: Book VII Chapter 11

Vol. IV
p413 Note D

Prices under the Lombard rule

Of course in order to estimate aright the deterrent effect of the money penalties which crowd the Lombard statute-book, we ought to know what was the purchasing power of the solidus aureus (twelve shillings) at this time. Our information on this point is necessarily vague. The fact that the average value of a slave (as denoted by his guidrigild) varied from 50 solidi down to 16, gives us some light on the question. In the year 725, we find the honourable woman Ermendruda selling for 12 golden solidi 'the boy Saorelanus, or whatever other name he may be known by in his own country Gaul' (Troya, IV.3.406). The documents copied in Troya's 'Codice Diplomatico Langobardo,' vol. IV, give us several transactions relating to the sale of land, but information as to the extent of the land thus sold is generally wanting, and where it is given I do not venture to estimate the quantity of the Lombard land measures.

It will be observed that all these sales (which extend in time from the year 704 to 740) relate to property in Tuscany, and therefore they may probably be taken as representing the top‑prices of Italian land.

For movable property, which evidently commanded what is, according to our ideas, an enormous price relatively to the price of land, we have an exceedingly interesting document quoted by Troya (p658). In it the Abbess Ursa informs her nephew what is the property which he is entitled to under his mother's marriage settlement: —

('Solidus tricenta,' twice repeated in the document, must apparently be taken as = trecenti, not triginta). Evidently personal property at this time was far more valuable, relatively, than real property. But even so, our study of the document in Troya leaves us with the impression that fines ranging, as did these of the Lombard code, from 300 to 900 solidi, would fall with crushing weight on all but the very wealthiest classes of the community.

As further illustrating the same subject, it may be mentioned that in the law passed to prevent the giving of extravagant marriage portions, the judex is forbidden to give his wife a meta of more than 400 solidi, and the ordinary noble is not allowed to give more than 300, while (apparently) all other classes of the community are limited to 200.

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