[856] _Puella empta_ appears in the _Pactus alamannorum_, 3, 29. _Cf._ SCHROEDER, _Güterrecht_, I, 17 ff.; WEINHOLD, _op. cit._, I, 323; FRIEDBERG, _op. cit._, 19. [857] "Lito regis liceat uxorem emere, ubicunqui voluerit. Sed non liceat ullam foeminam vendere."--_Lex saxonum_, tit. 18: WALTER, _Corpus juris germ._, I, 389. Tit. 6 fixes the price at 300 solidi: WALTER, I, 386. [858] _Lex wisigoth._, lib. iii, tit. i, 2: WALTER, _Corpus juris germ._, I, 466; LUDLOW, in _Dict. Christ. Ant._, I, 203. The bride-money is here called _pretium_, elsewhere the betrothal is styled _mercatio_: BRUNNER, _Rechtsgeschichte_, I, 74 n. 23. The whole of liber iii, WALTER, I, 465-91, relates to marriage and allied matters. [859] _Lex burgundionum_, tits. 12, 34, 51, 52, 66, 69: WALTER, I, 311, 320, 329, 330, 335, 336; for the Lombards, _Edictum Rotharis_, c. 178 ff.: WALTER, I, 710 ff., especially c. 182, which contains the form of betrothal. Compare this with the later ritual given by CANCIANI, II, 476, summarized by WEINHOLD, I, 341; LUDLOW, in _Dict. Christ. Ant._, I, 203. See also _Liutprandi leges_, lib. ii, c. 7 ff., 88, 93, 99, 102, 106, 112, 115, 119, etc.: WALTER, I, 759 ff. [860] LEHMANN, _Verlobung und Hochzeit_, 1 ff., 78, 79; WEINHOLD, _Altdeutsches Leben_, 240. SCHROEDER, _Rechtsgeschichte_, 287, denies that there are any sure traces of wife-purchase in northern law. During the period of the law-books, both in England and on the continent, the amount of the bride-money was generally fixed by custom or by statute. The price established seems usually to have equaled the value of the _mund_ or that of the _wergeld_, which depended upon the rank of the woman.[861] While the law thus fixed the amount of the bride-money, doubtless to facilitate an easy settlement of those cases in which marriages were illegally formed without payment of the _weotuma_, it by no means follows, as sometimes assumed, that its value was not ordinarily arranged by private agreement, as in the early period. [861] SCHROEDER, _op. cit._, 292; BRUNNER, _Rechtsgeschichte_, 75; WEINHOLD, _Deutsche Frauen_, I, 321 ff.; SOHM, _Eheschliessung_, 23, 24, who thinks the fixing of a legal price of great importance, the purchase of a maid being thus distinguished from that of a thing. The bride-money is thus the nominal price of an _unschätzbares_ object; it admits no bargaining; but the explanation of HABICHT, _Altdeutsche Verlobung_, 12, 13, given in the text, is simpler and more probable. SCHROEDER, _Güterrecht_, I, 11 ff., in connection with each code, gives a mass of details relative to the violation of the _mund_ by illegal marriage and the amount of the composition in each case. _Cf._ LABOULAYE, _Cond. des femmes_, 113; YOUNG, in _Essays_, 166; and ÆTHELBERHT, 31; THORPE, I, 11, where the _wergeld_ is mentioned.