LEX ALAMANNORUM
The earliest document of this nature is the so-called Lex
Alamannorum, an Alamannic code of law laid down between
716 and 719 by an assembly of thirty-four dukes, thirty-three
bishops, and sixty-five counts, under the presidency
of Duke Lantfrid I (d. 730).[56]
Article 82 of this code, which
fixes the compensation for arson, bears out what Tacitus
had stated some seven centuries earlier about the loosely
scattered character of Germanic settlements. This article
establishes the following sanctions:[57]
If at night a man sets
somebody's house (domus) or hall (sala) on fire and is
caught and found guilty, he is bound not only to restore
whatever he has destroyed by fire but, in addition, to pay a
fine of 40 shillings. If he lays fire to any other houses in the
yard (in curte), viz., the barn (scuria or granica) or the
storehouse (cellarium), he must likewise compensate for the
inflicted damage and settle with an additional fine of 21
shillings.
Fines are specified in the same manner for damage and
destruction to all the other service structures, the bathhouse
(stuba), the sheepfold (ovilis), and the pigsty (porcaricia),
as well as the houses and barns for the serfs (servi
domus, scura servi, spicaria servi). From this it follows that
the Alamannic farmstead of the beginning of the eighth
century consisted of a group of separate buildings in a
common yard (
curtis); its principal structures were the
house (
domus) and the hall (
sala). Whether
domus and
sala
are synonymous or indicate a separation of the principal
unit into a living house (
domus) and an eating hall (
sala)
remains uncertain.
From another passage in the same Lex Alamannorum
we gather incidentally some insight into the inner architectural
layout of such a dwelling. Article 94 states that if a
mother dies in childbirth, leaving a child who expires
after having lived for one hour and opened his eyes during
this time so that he could see the ridge (culmen) and the
four walls (iv parietes) of the house, the maternal inheritance
will fall to the father.[58]
This stipulation presupposes a
building open to the roof with internal subdivisions, whatever
they might have been, that did not obstruct the
simultaneous visibility, from the mother's bedstead, of the
four walls of the house and of the ridge of its roof.[59]