The word alode occurs for the first time in a Frankish document of the year 629-639, (1) and in a confirmation of the year 709 we find alote distinguished from "comparatum" and "adtractum," from what is bought and otherwise acquired. (2) In the Formulae and elsewhere this alote occurs generally in the combination "de alote parentum, paterna, materna" (3) or, especially in the Salic formulae, as in the document of the year 709. (4) The first expression is, no doubt, the original one, even as it is the older, for the clause "heredis meos in alote derelinquere," "to leave the heirs in the paternal estate," (5) like "de alote parentum" precisely corresponds with "ex successione, ex jure parentum" of the Italian and German documents, (6) while the Germanic laws which bear the title "De alodibus" speak in the text, not of alod, but of "hereditas." (7) Not a trace is to be found of alod before the seventh century anywhere, because it is a corruption of allegatum only in Merovingian France, as I shall soon show.

To avoid the possiblility of deception in donations, these had to be written in a conventional and solemn manner and had to be deposited with a judge or in the Curia. Constantine expressed this with the words "actis etiam adnectendis, quae apud judicem vel magistratus conficienda sunt," (8) to which the Interpretatio says "gesta vero donationum aut apud judicem, aut apud curiam alleganda sunt." In that same year it was determined that this allegatio could not take place outside the province of the donor, (9) and a hundred years later a donation without a proper allegatio was declared void, (10) while still later the Lex Burgundionum romana begins with the irrevocability of a gift to children by the father, if it has been "gestis allegata." (11) When Odoacer offered certain possessions in Sicily to Pierius, the latter had them recorded in Ravenna, (12) and two years later the flaw in an unrecorded piece of property, caused by the premature death of the conveyor, is remedied by the allegatio of the surviving wife. (13) The clause of allegation occurs in all the Ravenna donations of the sixth and seventh century, (14) and the French formulae of allegation of the sixth and seventh centuries centuries which are based on the Roman law also use "gestis alligare, adlegare, ligare, obligare." (15) while it is specifically mentioned in an immunity that it took the place of the allegatio. (16)

The Codex Theodosianus speaks of a "hereditas approbata allegationibus," (17) and it becomes in its nature a donation, was recorded as an allegatio, (18) even as this had been specifically provided for by Theodoric for the Ostrogoths. (19) There cannot be the slightest doubt about the derivation of alod from this allegatum, but it is also possible to ascertain how the phonetic change has taken place. In a donation of the year 615 which, in spite of some interpolations, is based on a genuine document, occurs the clause "saepius laudatus tam de fisco quam de comparato," (20) which is identical with the previously mentioned "tam de alote quam de comparato" and means, "the property, consisting of fiscal and purchased land, has been frequently recorded." Here laudare, a much used word for "to confirm," has taken the place of allegare "to record," which is quite natural, since the officers of the curia who confirmed the record bore the title of laudabilitas, (21) laudabilis vir, (22) and the legal record was known as "laudabiliter adlegatum." (23) From a confusion of allegatum and laudatum have arisen, alaudum, alod, alot, etc.

The Anglo-Saxons who frequently made their borrowings unnoticeable by translations into their language,have quite correctly rendered "hereditas allegata" by bocland, i.e., property recorded in a book. Where Alfred wrote bocland, the Quadripartitus used "terra testamentalis," (24) while others employed "libera terra, terra hereditatis" (25) for it, and later Cnut wrote quite correctly "alodium, id est bocland," where the Quadripartitus has "in hereditate sua terram" and the Consiliatio Cnuti circumscribes by "libera terra." (26) As in England the folcland is opposed to the bocland, so, on the continent the fiscal land with personal liberties and stated obligations is opposed to free land, with personal burdens, and the feudal system evolved from the former because circumstances were more favorable for its development.

It now remains to be shown why the Franks, who were not strict in the matter of recording, adopted the word allegatum as an expression for land enjoying immunities. In the law of 316 we find the clause "actis adnectendis," which seems to imply that, although another law of the same year uses the expression "apud acta adlegare," the original form was "apud acta alligare." The change to allegare is, no doubt, due to the fact that the free land of the veterans was held by them lawfully, "a lege habeant," as it says in the law of 364, (27) or "ut legibus convenit," as we have found in the formulae. The immunity of the German soldiers took the place of the allegatio, which was obligatory on the Roman citizens, hence the immunity of 566 correctly states "cartulam immunitatis sine gestorum obligatione manere." It is this a lege which gave way to a laude, because the donation of an immunity was in itself a confirmation of the right to the free land. Nothing but the Roman immunity could have created the Frankish alod.




Endnotes