Note 357 — Chapter VIII · THE UNFREE. THE SERF.

The only way of getting rid of this strange contradiction is, either to assume the passage to be a later interpolation, which there is no ground for, save the contradiction itself; or to take the passage in connection with Theodor. Poen. xlii. § 3, 4, 5, which refer to sale of a Christian among Jews or Heathens, and generally to fraudulent or illegal sale. But then, one cannot understand why the words “infantem suum proprium, vel proximum suum cognatum” should have been introduced by Ecgberht, though omitted by Theodore. Perhaps we may reconcile the passages, by assuming Ecgberht to refer to an illegal sale, viz. when the child was above seven years old, but still in the same category as those for whose safety Theodore provides by the same ecclesiastical penalty. The child or very near relation were precisely those who were most liable to be in “alteram regionem seducti, furati,” etc.