ABSTRACT
Merovingian and Carolingian sources refer to a subordinate official, called a centenarius, and his jurisdiction, called a centena. A basic political and judicial unit of the Germanic peoples, the hundred supposedly reflected the popular or democratic underpinnings of the Germanic state; the centenarius, therefore, far from being in origin a subordinate royal official, was at first a popular official elected by the hundred as its leader and as president of the hundred court or mallus. Variations on the Germanist view outlined above remained the standard teaching on the centenarius to at least the end of World War II at which time a new school of constitutional history quite rapidly laid the tenets of the old theory to rest. The Roman context for the centenarius in fact has more to tell us about his Merovingian namesake and the role of the centenarius and centena in the administrative system of the Frankish kings.
