Definitions For Wergeld

Noun

WERGELD. (countable and uncountable, plural WERGELDs) (historical, especially in Germanic, _, legal) blood money, blood money, the monetary value assigned to a person, set according to their rank, id=class, used to determine the compensation paid by the perpetrator of a crime to the victim in the case of injury or to the victim's kindred in the case of homicide. (historical, especially in Germanic, _, legal) Compensation thus determined and paid; a reparative payment.

Quotations

1862, John Benjamin Marsden, The Influence of the Mosaic Code Upon Subsequent Legislation, {{ISBN, 0790514338}}. : The first law we find is one of Æthelbirht's:—"if a freeman lie with a freeman's wife, let him pay for it with his 'wer-geld,' and provide another wife with his own money, and bring her to the other." 2005, Jean A. Stuntz, Hers, His, and Theirs: Community Property Law in Spain and Early Texas {{ISBN, 089672560X}}: : A person's class could be determined by the amount of his or her wergeld. When a malefactor killed an innocent person, the offender had to pay a fine called a wergeld. This compensation was paid to the victim's kin. The higher a person's status was, the higher his or her wergeld was. A ceorl's wergeld was usually set at two hundred shillings. A thegn's wergeld might be 1,200 shillings...The king's wergeld was also set so high that no one would contemplate killing him, because to do so would bankrupt the malefactor's family and they would all be sold into slavery to pay the debt. : {{...}} : When a wife was killed, her wergeld went to her birth family, not to her husband. : {{...}} : A man who committed adultery with another man's wife had to pay the wronged husband one-tenth the amount of his wergeld.

Translations

Welsh: galanas (for homicide) or sarhad (for injury) Arabic: دِيَة, f Bulgarian: кръ̀внина, f Danish: mandebøde, c, mandebod, c Dutch: weergeld, n, bloedprijs, m, bloedgeld, n Finnish: veriraha French: prix du sang, m German: Wergeld, n, Manngeld, n, Blutgeld, n Greek: ποινή, f : Ancient Greek: ποινή (poinē) Irish: airgead fola, m Macedonian: крвнина, f Ngazidja Comorian: diya, c9 Persian: خونبها, tr=xunbahâ Polish: główszczyzna, f Russian: ви́ра, f Serbo-Croatian: : Cyrillic: крва̀рина, f, крвнѝна, f, вражда, f : Latin: krvàrina, f, krvnìna, f vražda, f Spanish: precio de la sangre, m Swahili: diya, c9 Swedish: mansbot, c Ukrainian: ви́ра, f