On the Question of the Hierarchy of Legal Orders: Three Examples from Early Carolingian Frisia
The article examines the evidence from sources about the legal orders in historical Frisia, the territory of the modern Netherlands, in the Carolingian era — from 777 to 806. During the Charlemagne’s reign, these territories completely entered the Frankish Realm and were christianized. Therefore, the idea of the hierarchy of legal orders on these lands at the turn of the 8th and the 9th century provides an important evidence for the dynamic processes, going in the legal consciousness of the early medieval society. The sources include the private charters of Liudger, abbot of the monastery Werden an der Ruhr, preserved in the cartulary of the 9th century and in royal diplomas. In the three-parted study are being sequentially examined the charters of land donations to the monastery and the diplomas of Charlemagne, the main attention is focused on the charters of 793 and 802, as well as the diploma of 777. The author makes a conclusion about coexistence of various legal orders in the early Carolingian Frisia: based on personal, informal relations between the donor of the land and its recipient, supported by arguments from public law relations. This order is typical for actions within a local community. The legal order brought into this local world by the royal power through the sovereign's messengers and counts becomes impersonal, uses the concepts of legality and prevails over a larger territory, no longer in micro-, but in mesospaces. Finally, the royal power, in its appeal to counts and other judges of large districts, maintains a public-legal and formal relationship and operates in large macrospaces.