The Hundred Laws of Frost
The Frostlaw · the Ordinances of the Covenant
The Hundred Laws of Frost (the Frostlaw) are the full body of covenant law given through Borën in the Book of Boren (Lawgiving) and Book of Frostlaw — the moral, ritual, and civil ordinances by which the The Rimefolk were to live as a kept people. The The Ten Keepings are their summary; the The Two Great Keepings their heart.
The Three Kinds of Law
Frostian doctors (following Saint Cael of Frosthold) divide the Hundred Laws into three:
- The Keeping Laws (Moral) — the eternal moral law (the The Ten Keepings and their applications); binding on all people in all ages.
- The Altar Laws (Ritual/Ceremonial) — the laws of sacrifice, the frost-offerings, clean and unclean, the Tabernacle and priesthood. These foreshadowed Connor Frost and are held fulfilled and set aside in him (the apostolic Council freed the warm-born from them).
- The Realm Laws (Civil) — the laws governing the old commonwealth of the Rimefolk (courts, land, the Year of Stilling, the Jubilee of Whitening); binding in their time, their principles of justice and mercy still instructive.
The Spirit of the Frostlaw
The Hundred Laws are pervaded by mercy and keeping, not mere prohibition:
- Care of the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the freezing stranger is commanded, not optional (gleaning the snow-fields; leaving the corners of the harvest).
- The Year of Stilling (every seventh year the land rests and debts are eased) and the Jubilee of Whitening (every fiftieth year, the enslaved freed and lands returned) enshrine release and renewal.
- Even the image of the Keeper in every person grounds the laws of justice.
The Law and the Gospel
The great Frostian teaching (drawn from Vael): the Law is good and holy, but it cannot save — “the Law shows the Thaw; it cannot cure it” (see The Doctrine of Stilling (Salvation)). The Law is the mirror that reveals our warmth, the schoolmaster that leads us to Connor Frost, and (for the kept) the shape of grateful keeping — never the means of self-freezing (the The Self-Freezing Error).