Gairethinx

The gairethinx is a public rite and formal legal act of Lombard law, whose likely legal effect was that of making certain dispositions permanent and irrevocable. According to the view that prevailed in nineteenth- and twentieth-century historiography, the gairethinx would be the general assembly of arms-bearing, free men, and an expression of the popular sovereignty of ancient “Germans.” Resulting from cultural trends that were prevalent in the historiography and legal scholarship of nineteenth-century Germany, the traditional interpretation of the gairethinx has been persuasively refuted in the late twentieth century by the legal historian Ennio Cortese.