Name: Benjamin A. Saltzman

Title: Seized Secret: The Silence of the Stolen Slave in Ine’s 53rd Law

Abstract: In the middle of King Ine’s legal code (c. 693) rests a fascinating law, entitled “Be forstolenes monnes forefonge” (On the seizing of a stolen man). While the “stolen man” in Ine’s 53rd law is likely a slave, his socio-legal position and the role of his testimony are not so clear. This paper will explore the details of Ine’s 53rd law in the context of other Anglo-Saxon laws that pertain to either theft or slavery. The bulk of the paper, however, will focus on the ways in which Ine 53 problematizes the idea of testimony in Anglo-Saxon law. In order to do so, I will draw on the interesting and complex linguistic connection between slavery, theft, and secrecy. That theft and secrecy in Anglo-Saxon England are etymologically related concepts has been heretofore unrealized. The intertwining of these three concepts in turn sheds light on some of the most perplexing elements of Ine 53.One of those elements is the fact that Ine 53 is the only extant Anglo-Saxon law that resurrects the early Germanic practice of calling upon the place of the dead to bear witness. The law does this in order to account for the hypothetical situation in which the previous slave owner has died and therefore cannot testify to the plaintiff’s rightful ownership of the slave. According to other Anglo-Saxon laws on theft, the owner of a stolen object (the plaintiff or Person A) must first prove that he rightfully purchased the object in question from Person B. Person B (typically referred to as an auctor) must testify to the sale and also refer to the next auctor (Person C) from whom Person B purchased the object. Person C must then testify and refer, so on and so forth. No other law in Ine’s code considers the event in which one of these auctores has already died. Typically, therefore, encountering a dead auctor would simply stop the chain of testimony and the legal proceedings would continue the search for the thief since prior ownership has reasonably been proven. However, in Ine 53 a dead auctor poses a more serious problem. I will argue that the potential for the slave (unlike a stolen cow) to testify to his own history is always an option, but an option the law is unwilling to acknowledge. In other words, the law privileges the testimony of a dead man’s grave over that of a stolen slave. This, I propose, allows the slave to remain silent, to keep a secret, while every other member of Anglo-Saxon society (including the tomb) is forced to testify.

 

Benjamin A. Saltzman is a first-year doctoral student in English and Medieval Studies at the University of California, Berkeley where his academic interests are centered around Anglo-Saxon England, specifically Anglo-Latin and Old English literature, medieval law, monasticism and monastic texts, paleography and codicology, as well as contemporary critical theory. _