Remarks on the Contractual and Delictual Issues of Slaves in the Lex Baiuvariorum

This paper intends to analyse those provisions of the Lex Baiuvariorum that regulate the position of persons in non-free status, i.e. slaves (servi, mancipia, and ancillae). In the course of our endeavour, we make efforts to find an answer to the question as to what extent the significant ecclesiastical impact, far exceeding the effect of the rest of German folk laws, becomes evident in Lex Baiuvariorum: to what extent acknowledgement of the human quality of slaves appears in the code. Not incidentally, at the end of the paper, we try to answer the question whether the meaning of the phrases mancipium, servus, and ancilla – which are usually translated by the words servant and maidservant – can be conveyed in theory by translating them by the word slave, or they require any other, more differentiated term to reveal the legal content of these phrases.