1 gen 600 anni - Textus Roffensis (Rochester Book)

Descrizione:

- It is the earliest know English law code
- It is also the first known writing in English.
- Lays compensation amounts for different offenses (This shows that the COMPENSATION culture dates back from much earlier than the USA existence).
- The rank of the injured person determines the amount of compensation.
- The responsibility for enforcement of the laws was on the families, not on the state. The society needed to enforce the laws.
- The amount of compensation determined by the law was a starting point for negotiations between the families.
- Merits of the code: The greatest threat to stability of the society came from internal feuds, not outer invaders.
- Ethelbert is the first English king to become Christian.
- At the time, society centered around farming and livestock.


The Textus Roffensis (Latin for "The Tome of Rochester"), fully entitled the Textus de Ecclesia Roffensi per Ernulphum episcopum ("The Tome of the Church of Rochester up to Bishop Ernulf") and sometimes also known as the Annals of Rochester, is a mediaeval manuscript that consists of two separate works written between 1122 and 1124. It is catalogued as "Rochester Cathedral Library, MS A.3.5" and is currently on display in a new exhibition at Rochester Cathedral, Rochester, Kent.[1] It is thought that the main text of both manuscripts was written by a single scribe, although the English glosses to the two Latin entries (items 23 and 24 in table below) were made by a second hand.[2] The annotations might indicate that the manuscript was consulted in some post-Conquest trials.[3] However, the glosses are very sparse and just clarify a few uncertain terms. For example, the entry on f. 67r merely explains that the triplex iudiciu(m) is called in English, ofraceth ordel (insult ordeal = triple ordeal).

There is a clear, digitised version in the Rylands Medieval Collection.[4]

CONTENTS
The first part is a collection of laws and other, primarily secular documents, whilst the second is the cartulary of the Cathedral priory.[5] The first part is of fundamental importance to the study of Anglo-Saxon law. It begins with the earliest surviving royal law-code, from King Æthelberht of Kent, dating to c 600, followed by those of two Kentish successors, the joint kings Hlothere and Eadric, c 679–685, and Wihtred, 695. This is the only manuscript source for these three laws, though Wihtred's are heavily reliant on the laws of the contemporary West-Saxon King, Ine (see item 6 below).

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