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This paper is devoted to the private and criminal law position of slaves, as part of that, examining some issues of terminology in relation to medieval servitus and then getting to slaves as the subject of legal transactions, transactions entered into by slaves and the nature of peculium, damage caused to alien slaves and the problems of sanctioning crimes committed by slaves. In terms of the view of society depicted in early medieval German laws it is a highly interesting issue, widely disputed in literature, how the position of slaves is reflected in the text of the codes. It is a generally asserted view in literature that in the strict sense of the word slavery (servitus) as an institution can be hardly found among the Germans tribes. This standpoint goes back primarily to the interpretation, or misinterpretation, as the case may be, of Tacitus's Germania. The phrases servus and mancipium are translated in literature consistently by the words Knecht, Höriger or Leibeigener and not by Sklave, that is, by terms that suggest some kind of-and compared to the content of the Antique meaning quite significant-improvement in the position, status of persons in this social standing, a tendency pointing towards acknowledge-ment of their personality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]