“If a man, kinless of paternal relatives, fight and slay a man, then, if he have maternal relatives, let them pay a third of the wēr: his guild-brethren a third part: for a third let him flee. If he have no maternal relatives, let his guild-brethren pay half: for half let him flee.... If a man kill a man thus circumstanced, if he have no relatives, let half be paid to the king, half to his guild-brethren.” (Thorpe, Ancient Laws and Institutes of England, vol. i, pp. 79-81.) Again, in the same work, Leges Henrici Primi, vol. i, p. 596, the ideas of the kindred and the guild run together in the most intimate manner: “Si quis hominem occidat,—Si eum tunc _cognatio sua_ deserat, et pro eo _gildare_ nolit,” etc. In the Salic law, the members of a _contubernium_ were invested with the same rights and obligations one towards the other (Rogge, Gerichtswesen der Germanen, ch. iii, p. 62). Compare Wilda, Deutsches Strafrecht, p. 389, and the valuable special treatise of the same author (Das Gildenwesen im Mittelalter. Berlin, 1831), where the origin and progress of the guilds from the primitive times of German heathenism is unfolded. He shows that these associations have their basis in the earliest feelings and habits of the Teutonic race,—the family was, as it were, a natural guild,—the guild, a factitious family. Common religious sacrifices and festivals,—mutual defence and help, as well as mutual responsibility,—were the recognized bonds among the _congildones_: they were _sororitates_ as well as _fraternitates_, comprehending both men and women (deren Genosser wie die Glieder einer Familie enge unter einander verbunden waren, p. 145). Wilda explains how this primitive social and religious _phratry_ (sometimes this very expression _fratria_ is used, see p. 109) passed into something like the more political tribe, or _phylê_ (see pp. 43, 57, 60, 116, 126, 129, 344). The sworn _commune_, which spread so much throughout Europe in the beginning of the twelfth century, partakes both of the one and of the other,—_conjuratio_,—_amicitia jurata_ (pp. 148, 169). The members of an Albanian _phara_ are all jointly bound to exact, and each severally exposed to suffer, the vengeance of blood, in the event of homicide committed upon, or by, any one of them (Boué, _ut supra_). [94] See the valuable chapter of Niebuhr, Röm. Gesch. vol. i, pp. 317, 350, 2d edit.