One should not take punishment in the Early Middle Ages for granted. As the various German publications on Die Geburt der Strafe [the beginning of penalty] show, most scholars who have researched this field place the beginning of criminal law in the late Middle Ages. However, the question remains of how these results correlate with Karl Siegfrid Bader’s well-known quotation: ‘punishment as a reaction has always been present, because without it no law would be possible.’

Here I intend to use Anglo-Saxon law to show that both positions are problematic. Although Anglo-Saxon legislation has so far played only a minor role within this large body of research on the beginning of punishment, as a matter of fact, written Anglo-Saxon legislation, starting from its beginnings in the seventh century, offers a good field for analysis of the beginning of punishment. First of all, being written in the vernacular and not in Latin, it is the only early medieval legislation that offers insight into an early vocabulary of punishment. In addition, the under-studied Anglo-Saxon laws allow us to observe the progression between two methods of dealing with offences: restitutive, which is typical of family-centred societies; and punitive, which is typical of civilizations where a central power is emerging. Lastly, in relation to the interaction of Germanic law with a converted Christian order, it shows that the influence of Christianity marked a turning point in developing notions of crime and punishment.

Before Punishment: Æthelberht of Kent

When we look at the Kentish king Æthelberht’s first Anglo-Saxon law code from the very beginning of the seventh century, we can see no traces of corporal punishment, only of monetary penalties. Most of his laws consisted of personal injury tariffs (33–71.1 [33–71]) and a list of offences (1–31 [1–31]) that were to be compensated to the victim by a particular sum of money, which was calculated based on the social status of offender and victim. The detailed descriptions of offences and the large number of acts demanding compensation indicate that Æthelberht’s laws were basically designed to assure both the wholeness or physical integrity of the person, and the safety of property (as articulated in the clauses on theft, and breaking and entering into a man’s dwelling or enclosure).