LXXX. Summus bovus 5 tremisses valet. Medianus 4 tremisses valet. Minor quod appreciatus fuerit. LXXVII. Illa mellissima vacca 4 tremisses liceat adpreciare. Illa alia sequenteriana solidum 1. These clauses show that the solidi in which the wergelds were paid were gold solidi of three tremisses. In the Ripuarian laws the ox was equated with 2 gold solidi, _i.e._ 6 tremisses, so that we learned from the equation that the wergeld of the Ripuarian liber, 200 solidi, was really a wergeld of 100 oxen. But the above equations show that under Alamannic law the wergeld of the liber was not so. In the Alamannic laws the best ox was valued only at five tremisses instead of six, so that the wergeld of 200 solidi of the medius Alamannus was really a wergeld of 120 oxen; and the 160 solidi of the wergeld of the _baro de mino flidis_ of the ‘Pactus,’ or simple ‘liber’ of the Lex Hlotharii, was a wergeld of 96 oxen or 120 Alamannic ‘_sweetest cows_.’ Any one who has seen the magnificent fawn-coloured oxen by which waggons are still drawn in the streets of St. Gall will appreciate what the ‘summus bovus’ of the Alamannic region may have been. Why it should have been worth in gold less than the oxen of other lands does not appear. [Illustration] CHAPTER VII. _TRIBAL CUSTOMS OF THE TRIBES CONQUERED BY CHARLEMAGNE._ I. THE EFFECT UPON WERGELDS OF THE NOVA MONETA. [Sidenote: The _nova moneta_ of Charlemagne.] We have reached a point in our inquiry at which it becomes necessary to trouble the reader with further details concerning the changes in the Frankish currency, made by Charlemagne. We are about to examine the customs as regards wergelds of those tribes which owed their laws, in the shape in which we have them, to the conquests of Charlemagne. The alterations in the currency, made literally whilst the laws were in course of construction, naturally left marks of confusion in the texts relating to wergelds, and we have to thread our way through them as best we can. [Sidenote: A change from gold to silver.] The change which we have to try to understand was in the first place a change from a gold to a silver currency--_i.e._ from the gold currency of Merovingian solidi and tremisses to the silver currency of Charlemagne’s _nova moneta_. There had been a certain amount of silver coinage in circulation before, but the mass of the coinage had been hitherto gold, mostly in gold tremisses. In all the Frankish laws hitherto examined the monetary unit was the gold solidus with its third--the tremissis. And the only question was whether the solidi and tremisses were of Imperial or of Merovingian standard--whether the solidus was the Merovingian solidus of 86·4 wheat-grains and the tremissis 28·8, or the Imperial solidus of 96 wheat-grains and the tremissis 32. [Sidenote: Merovingian kings first used and then imitated Imperial coin.]