Bride price |
(or morning gift); money or property paid by the groom to the bride, apparently at her immediate disposal |
Charter |
A legal record, originally in the sense of a diploma, but later also used to record grants and leases of other kinds and to laymen |
Chirograph |
A document written up in multiple copies on a single sheet and cut up to be given into the keeping of several interested parties in such a way that they could be confirmed authentic by placing them back together |
Diploma |
( < Greek, “folded in two”) A legal record of a royal grant of land or privileges to a religious house |
Dower |
Property of the groom’s formally recognized as becoming the bride’s on his passing |
Feud |
A legal principle hinging on kinship and the compensation of injured parties, as opposed to fines payable to the authorities |
Folk law |
Oral law, characterized by variation and flux |
fosterlean |
Maintenance payment; sum paid by the groom, presumably to compensate the bride’s guardian for having kept her thus far |
mund |
Lit. “hand; protection; guardianship”; in law, refers to the compensation for the violation of someone’s protection or guardianship, such as of a child, freedman, or (as some scholars believe) woman |
peaceweaver |
Term used to refer to women married off into a rival group in hopes of securing peace |
wergeld |
(or wergild); whenever anyone who was not a slave was murdered, the law required the killer to pay the victim’s relatives a “man-price” as compensation. The amount of wergeld depended on the victim’s social rank. Wergeld, or a proportion thereof, also came to be used as a unit for compensation of other offences. |
Writ |
A short, sealed letter intended for reading out in legal gatherings, announcing e.g. changes in land ownership |