Tithing and Frankpledge

From medieval England we know the ‘Tithing‘, also ‘Tything‘. Originating from the 10th Century, a Tithing is defined as a legal, administrative or territorial unit from early Anglo-Saxon England, meaning a group of ten households, forming a ‘Thing’ (assembly). Each household was represented by the leading adult male.
The fundamental characteristic from the Tithings was the compulsory sharing of responsibilities among persons from a family. (Family means here people related through kinship). Those leading males, called ‘Tithing-men’, also legally represented their family when an oath of allegiance had to be sworn to a Lord or other noble.
This ‘system’ was first called ‘frith-borh’, later the term ‘Frankpledge‘ was used. Literally that means “peace-pledge”.
If someone of the family had committed a crime, the tithing-man was also responsible that the accused would appear in court. If he was absent, the whole family could be amerced.
This system of ‘joint suretyship’ can be traced back to the first half of the 11th Century.
The duties of the Tithing changed during the following centuries, it became used for a wider range of legal and fiscal contents, and slowly the Frankpledge part came more in the background or disappeared in many regions. But generally in some parts of rural England, these kinds of Tithings existed even up into the 19th Century.

Today, the term Tithing is used only in a church-related meaning of paying a ‘tithe’ (a tenth) of the income as a contribution to a religious organization. Sometimes use of the term also points to a tax that has to be paid to the government. However, the etymology here is different; it doesn’t go back to the Germanic and Old English ‘þing’ but to ‘Tithe‘, derived from Old English: ‘teogoþa’, meaning a “tenth”. Tithing then is the act of paying that tenth.

Thing and Lex Salica

The Franks called a small court of justice a ‘Hûsting‘, (House-Thing), similar is the Anglo-Saxon ‘husting‘ which was a court of justice for urgent lawsuits. At such small Things, the Frankish people had to follow the rules of the tribe; their most famous set of laws was called the Salic Law.
That LEX SALICA was in the early 6th Century commissioned by Clovis I, the first king of all Franks. This Salic Law, likely named after the Frankish royal Salian dynasty, used the Latin term THUNGINUS, which is assumed to be connected to Old Saxon ‘thing-en*’ or ‘thingôn*. This Old Saxon term is also passed down through the epic poem Heliand from the 9th Century where an event or a case is meant:
Verse: 4376 reads:
[thenkean] fora themu thinge;

translated:
remember, before the event (the case);

The term THUNGINUS is likely medieval Latin, used for the first time as this Lex Salica appeared. (Due to the name of this set of laws, the word ‘salicus‘ became a synonym for Frankish). A Thunginus was a court officer who was the leading judge of the court in a district.
King Clovis I was baptized in 496, so before the Salic Law came into being. Somehow it does not seem comprehensible that an old Germanic God (Thinc(g)sus) would be honored by Christians by choosing this term. It seems much more acceptable, that the term ‘Thing’ (or its variations in the several Germanic languages) was simply common usage at the time without any religious background.

Concerning the Thing, apparently this Law several times mentions this term. In an English translation it starts with:
1. “If anyone be summoned before the “Thing” by the king’s law, and does not come, he shall be fined 600 denars, which make 15 shillings (solidi).

2. But he who summons another, and does not come himself, shall, if a lawful impediment have not delayed him, be fined 15 shillings, to be paid to him whom he summoned.

This Salic Law also states:
If any man should wish to migrate, and has permission from the king, and shall have shown this in the public “Thing;” whoever, contrary to the decree of the king, shall presume to oppose him, shall be sentenced to 8000 denars, which make 200 shillings.

And:
If any one shall set fire to a house in which men were sleeping, as many freemen as were in it can make complaint before the “Thing;” and if any one shall have been burned in it, the arsonist shall be sentenced to 2500 denars, which make 63 shillings.

It looks like the term ‘Thing’ appears only in the translations, because the reconstructed Latin original does not mention that term, as exemplarily is shown in the Latin text of the above Nr. 1:
Si quis ad mallum legis dominicis mannitus fuerit et non uenerit si eum sonies non detenuerit, 600 denarios qui faciunt solidi 15 culpabilis iudiceter.

From the end of the 9th Century, so almost an Old High German translation of the Latin text of the Salian Law was made in a ‘writing-school’ in the city of Mainz. That translation reads:
Sohwerso anthran zithinge gimenit. intierni cumit iz ini sunne ni habet, gelte 8cillinga XV

The term ‘zithinge‘ is usually interpreted as ‘to the Thing’ (German: zum Thing). However, also the interpretation ‘court sitting’, (German: Gerichtssitzung) is proposed. Whether the two interpretations interrelate is not yet known, it should not be excluded.

Hence, the translations from Latin does not seem to be literal but interpretive, likely based on the aforementioned term THUNGINUS being the leader of the gathering and/or perhaps on an Old High German term for a court sitting.

Thingbooths

Often it is stated that the king, the tribe leader or the head of the kin had the function of the chairman during the Thing, which took place in the open air and lasted for three days. The discussions and all legal matters were held during daylight only. At night, the Thing-participants had their own dwellings on the Thing place …
Throughout the Northwest and North of Europe, strategically situated places are found from which archaeological and radiocarbon dating show that those sites contained dwellings for humans, dated from 200 CE – 500 CE upward. They do not show signs of any agricultural use and no remnants of animals are found there. Researchers are convinced that these places could not have been used for permanent habitation. Such a periodical use of those ‘accommodations’ on those sites presumably indicates that it concerned meeting sites. We don’t have any knowledge of some legal society using those places for such gatherings (Things) in Northern Europe before the 6th Century. For North-Western Europe, south of Scandinavia we only have spare Roman sources about cultic meetings. Our related knowledge about Scandinavia starts in the Viking era. Any projection back in time about pre-Viking Things is based only on interpretation, of course using the knowledge that the Viking cultures were developed from earlier societies. When today the historical Things are spoken and written about, it deals with the Vikings and the Middle Ages in Scandinavia, Iceland and Greenland, the European mainland and the British Islands starting at the earliest in Viking times.

A sitting of a local Thing, being a court of justice often but not always was held on one day. But if it needed more than one day, usually people could go home, as in most cases their homes were rather near. Bigger regional or nationwide Things, being an assembly in which also juristic matters were discussed and court rulings were decided, could take several days. Then so called Thingbooths were built. In the Middle Ages since the Viking era these dwellings consisted usually of a stacked sod or turf base and a tent-like roof, made for temporary use. After the Thing had ended, those booths were closed and stayed empty until the next Thing. Every leader had his own booth in which he and his retinue were lodged. Later it may have been real tent camps, but from the beginning they were more or less a bit tent-alike; the Old Norse word ‘búð’ for those ‘huts’ is often translated today with ‘tent’.
Things were even held up to the Viking colony in Greenland. Two places were found there, where remnants were identified as Thing-booths.