Underlying all of this is the idea that the value of a person and her parts, whether it is
wergeld, the worth of a whole person which changes depending on social position, or of the parts depending on their usefulness, is determinable.
Mientras tanto Recaredo y Gontran pugnaban en Septimania por la possessio de las ciudades amuralladas de Carcasona y Nimes (Gregorio de Tours, H.F., VIII, 28; VIII, 30) sin que sepamos las razones del enfrentamiento; pero es facil suponer que el de Borgona estuviera reclamando el
wergeld o compensacion por la muerte de Ingundis.
(188.)
Wergeld was an Anglo-Saxon schedule of tort/crime penalties to be paid to the victim of a wrong, or to the family of a decedent.
Most offenses under the early Normans were still defined by Anglo-Saxon customary law, but elimination of the
wergeld system meant that those offenses considered to be violations of the king's peace were significantly expanded, and the Normans continually added offenses of this kind.
30) regarding honest
wergeld (Gif man mannan ofslea, unfaecne feo gehwilce gelde).
Restitution (bot, "boot" or "amends") could be made either by returning stolen goods to the owner or by compensating the victim (or the victim's family) for the value of the things taken or for bodily harm committed, up to and including murder, by paying a "man price" (
wergeld) (Benson [1990] 2011, 26).
Mas lenta fue la trasformacion de los afectos entre las comunidades germanicas, acostumbradas a un uso politico de la colera o la venganza (
wergeld) que se atenuo gracias a las conexiones de la aristocracia con las nuevas fundaciones monasticas, especialmente en el norte de la Galia.
(10) Neither bridewealth, the money used to arrange marriage, nor
wergeld (or "bloodwealth"), the money presented to the family of a murder victim so as to prevent or resolve a blood-feud, is a form of payment or compensation.
