7. The Gens Among Celts and Germans¶
Core Argument¶
Among the Celts, the gens persisted in its fullest form in Ireland and Scotland until disrupted by English conquest. Welsh laws from the eleventh century reveal collective village cultivation, with each family holding five acres for itself while additional land was tilled in common—a clear indication of gentes or their subdivisions. Pairing marriage still prevailed among Celts at that time, not yet displaced by monogamy: in Wales, marriage could be dissolved by notification before seven years elapsed, with defined rules for property division and child custody; women could vote in assemblies and demand divorce on broad grounds, including the husband’s bad breath. The Irish gens, or sept, held land as common property, redistributed by the gentile chief upon a member’s death—a practice surviving into the nineteenth century in rundale systems. The Scottish clan was a gentile body with male descent, but mother right had previously existed among the Picts, and the right of the first night survived as a relic of group marriage.
Among Germans, organisation by gentes before the migrations is certain. Caesar’s reference to Suevi settled by gentes and kindreds is unambiguous. Tacitus records that the maternal uncle regarded his nephew as his own son, and the sister’s son was considered a better hostage than the son—proof of the matriarchal gens. By Tacitus’ time, father right had largely replaced mother right, but the latter survived in inheritance by the maternal uncle and in the high status of women. The Old Norse poem Völuspà treats betrayal by sisters’ sons as worse than fratricide, showing memory of mother right into the Viking age. Marriage was pairing marriage approaching monogamy, with strict chastity required of girls. The wergeld, derived from the gentile organisation, replaced blood revenge and was widespread among many peoples.
The dispute over whether Tacitus’ Germans had divided land is now settled: all peoples initially cultivated land collectively by gens or communistic household communities, then allotted land to families with periodic repartitions—a custom surviving in Germany to the present. Kovalevsky’s work shifts the question from communal versus private property to the form of communal property. He argues Tacitus’ conditions presuppose the household community, not the village community; the latter developed later from population increase. German settlements consisted of large household communities cultivating land proportionally, with common waste land. Tacitus’ “changing the cultivated land” means agronomic rotation. In Tacitus’ time, Germans had a century of settled life, with progress in production: log houses, woollen mantles, milk and meat diet, cattle and horses as wealth. Iron was rare, runic writing was for religious magic, human sacrifices continued. The constitution corresponded to the upper stage of barbarism: a council of chiefs, an assembly of the people with real power, and military leaders chosen by ability. Confederacies had kings aiming at tyranny. Retinues of warriors pledged to leaders favoured monarchic power and plunder, forming the basis of later nobility. This constitution was the highest form of the gentile order, which the state replaced when society outgrew it.