Archbishop Hincmar and the Authorship of Lex Salica 1

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
In the course of a long career, first as a monk at Saint-Denis and then, from 845 to 882, as Archbishop of Rheims and principal adviser of the West Frankish kings, Hincmar said and wrote much that earned him enemies. Hincmar spent his early life in the monastery of Saint-Denis. It is known that he came to be a person of consequence in the community, for he occupied an office that gave him access to the archives, and was an intimate of the Abbot Hilduin. We are to suppose that, employing some fragments of genuine legal tradition, Hincmar set down in writing the archaic text known as Lex Salica; and that, having done so, he saw to it that the text was rapidly disseminated in a variety of versions that simulated a complex manuscript tradition. He even furnished his text with a refinement which, in the event, proved unnecessary. He glossed it in a bogus archaic language.

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: