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The Doom Book, Dōmbōc, Code of Alfred or Legal Code of Ælfred the Great was the code of laws ("dooms" being laws or judgments) compiled by Alfred the Great ( 893 AD). Alfred codified three prior Anglo-Saxons codes – those of Æthelberht of Kent ( 602 AD), Ine of Wessex ( 694 AD) and Offa of Mercia ( 786 AD) – to which he prefixed a modified version of the Ten Commandments of Moses and incorporated rules of life from the Mosaic Code and the Christian code of ethics.
The Christian theologian F. N. Lee extensively documented Alfred the Great's work of collecting the law codes from the three Christian Saxon kingdoms and compiling them into his Doom Book. Lee details how Alfred incorporated the principles of the Mosaic law into his Code, and how this Code of Alfred became the foundation for the Common Law.
In the book's extensive prologue, Alfred summarises the Mosaic and Christian codes. Michael Treschow, UBC Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies, reviewed how Alfred laid the foundation for the Spirit of Mercy in his code,Michael Treschow, "The Prologue to Alfred's Law Code: Instruction in the Spirit of Mercy", Florilegium 13, 1994, pp. 79–110. stating that the last section of the Prologue not only describes "a tradition of Christian law from which the law code draws but also it grounds secular law upon Scripture, especially upon the principle of mercy".
The law code contains some laws that may seem bizarre by modern standards, such as: "If a man unintentionally kills another man by letting a tree fall on him, the tree shall be given to the kinsmen of the slain."Simon Keynes (1999). "King Alfred the Great and Shaftesbury Abbey". Studies in the Early History of Shaftesbury Abbey. Dorset County Council. On the other hand, this precept may have anticipated the future common law of negligence, which provides that a person who is injured by the unintentional carelessness of another is entitled to recover compensation for his or her injury. In the context of the aforementioned law, the felled tree would be a valuable commodity.
The text was translated into Latin during the reign of Cnut as the third part of the Instituta Cnuti, and survives in the following manuscripts:
The text was independently translated into Latin a second time during the reign of Henry I as part of the Latin compilation known as Quadripartitus, which survives in ten manuscripts.
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