contain, more than a hundred have this appearance; legislation has become diplomacy. Now what is the dominant characteristic of the feudal society? Precisely the facts which we here observe; petty states, petty governments, considering themselves each independent in its territory, or nearly so, quarrel, dispute, reciprocally send ambassadors, hold conferences, form conventions. During a long period the relations of royalty with the feudal lords dispersed throughout the French territory are nothing else; its laws, its charters, are treaties; its progress is concession or acquisition. This is what distinguishes, what characterises feudal society when considered in its whole. Now, under the last Carlovingians, this characteristic already appears in the laws there is no longer any legislation, properly so called: there is diplomacy between independent states.

You see the history of legislation leads us to the same results to which history, properly so called, conducted us. We have just put to laws the corresponding question to that which we have addressed to events; the answer is the same: we have discovered not only the same tendency, but the same progression in the development of facts so different. This, if I do not deceive myself, is the best confirmation of our view of the dismemberment of the empire of the Carlovingians. We have had reason to lay aside as incomplete that which is drawn from the diversity of races, for you see it is contradictory to the history of legislation; from the ninth to the eleventh century, the diversity of races, instead of exercising any more empire over laws, ceased to be a dominant principle, and the source of variety: the laws vary not according to races, but according to classes and to places.

The diversity of races, then, will never explain the history of the legislation at this epoch, whilst the progressive development of the feudal society, the necessary formation of a multitude of petty states and petty powers,-one sole state and one sole power having become impossible-alike accounts for the vicissitudes of legislation and the vicissitudes of society

I will go no further into the history of the laws under the Carlovingiaus. I should find there the texts for many curious observations; but they would require too much detail, and would carry us further than we have time to go. In our

next lecture we will examine the history of the church, of religious society at the same epoch; and then see if it will give us results analogous to those which have been furnished us by the history of civil society. Before, however, I close this lecture, I will place before you a particular fact which did not come naturally within the scope of the considerations I have been suggesting to you, but which yet it is desirable that you should be acquainted with. This is the distribution of the missi dominici, sent throughout the kingdom by Charles le Chauve in 853, the only year in reference to which the details of this distribution have come down to us. France was then divided into eighty-six districts or territorial circumscriptions. The coincidence of this number with that of our present department, though very singular, is pure matter of chance; some of these eighty-six districts are described as comprehending several counties. They were divided among twelve companies of missi, whose total number was forty-three. We have their names and their quality. Of the forty-three, thirteen were bishops, five abbots, and twenty-five laymen, without any particular title; at the head of each mission was a bishop; at least a bishop occurs first in each list.

The consequences to be deduced from this table are unimportant, but the document is a curious one in itself.

TWENTY-SIXTH LECTURE.

Object of the lecture-Internal history of the Gallo-Frankish church, from the middle of the 8th century to the end of the 10th-Anarchy which pervaded it in the first half of the 8th century-Twofold principle of reform-The reformation is actually undertaken by the first Carlovingians: 1. By the civil power; 2. By the ecclesiastical power-Special reforms-Order of canons-Its origin and progress-Reformation of the monastic orders by Saint Benedict d'Aniane-They change character— Preponderance of the temporal power in the Gallo-Frankish church at this epoch-Proofs-Still the church progresses towards its future preponderance-But it is not to the profit of its own government, of the bishops of France, that this progress is to turn.

I HAVE already given the history of the Gallo-Frankish church up to the accession of the Carlovingians, towards the middle of the eighth century. I then considered it under the two points of view to which all questions which may arise with regard to a religious society attach themselves; on the one hand, without, in its relations with the civil society, with the state; on the other, within, in its organization and internal government. And not only the church in general, but those two distinct elements, the priests and the monks, the secular clergy and the regular clergy, have been the subject of a twofold inquiry.1

It conducted us, you will remember, to this result—that at the commencement of the eighth century, the Gallo-Frankish church was a prey to an ever-increasing anarchy. Externally, far from simplifying and fixing itself, its relations with the state became more and more confused, disordered,

See the 19th Lecture.

uncertain; the spiritual power and the temporal power "lived from day to day without principles, without fixed conditions; they encountered everywhere, running against each other, confounding, disputing the means of action, struggling and meeting in darkness and at chance.” 1 Internally, in its own government, the situation of the church was no better episcopacy had entirely usurped it; the inferior clergy in vain struggled to maintain some rights, to assure themselves some guarantees. And, after having usurped everything, the episcopal aristocracy itself fell into a powerless anarchy: scarcely were there any more councils, scarcely any more metropolitan power; egoism penetrated there as in civil society; each bishop governed his diocese at his will— despotic towards his inferiors, independent of his superiors and his equals. The monasteries presented almost the same phenomena. So that, taking all things together, a little before the middle of the eighth century, that which dominated in the heart of the church, as in the state, in FrankishGaul, was disorganization.

Still, at the same time that we recognised this fact, we caught a glimpse on the two banks of the Rhine, both for church and for state, of the first glimmering of another destiny. There were growing up together, on the one hand, that race of the Pepins which was to give Frankish-Gaul new masters; on the other, that Germanic church which, regularly and strongly organised under the influence of papacy, might serve for the reform of the other churches in the west, as a fulcrum and model.

It so, in fact, happened. You have seen, under the first Carlovingians, order and life re-enter into civil government: we are about to be present at the same fact in the church, at the same epoch, and from the same causes.

There is no need of demonstration; it breaks forth on all sides. From Pepin le Bref to Louis le Debonnaire, it is im possible not to be struck with the movement of reform which speaks out and propagates itself in the Gallo-Frankish church. Activity and rule appear in it at the same time. The temporal government labours with all its strength to introduce them. Pepin and Charlemagne commenced by drawing the episcopacy out of the anarchy and indolence into which it had fallen; they

See the 12th Lecture

restored the power of the metropolitans, frequently assembled the bishops, occupied themselves with giving back to ecclesiastical government its entirety and regularity. Towards 747, at the request of Pepin, pope Zachary sends a collection of canons to him. In 774, Adrian I. sends a second, much more complete, to Charlemagne: and Charlemagne does not confine himself to circulating these codes of ecclesiastical discipline; he carefully watches over their observation; he causes new canons to be decreed; religious administration is evidently one of the principal affairs of his government. He succeeded in reawaking in the church that general, regular activity which so long since had almost died away. Twenty councils only were held in the seventh century, and only seven in the first half of the eighth. Dating from Pepin, they once more became frequent. The following is a table of those which met under the Carlovingian race:

This fact alone attests the return of activity and life into ecclesiastical society; and this activity did not content itself with holding councils, with regulating the immediate and special affairs of the clergy; it extended itself to the wants of religious society in general; of all the Christian people, in the future as in the present. This was the time of the definitive improvement of the liturgy; writings upon the ecclesiastical offices, their celebration, their history abound; and rules establish themselves in the train of these treatises. It is also