5. Not only did the Carlovingians thus dispose of the bishoprics, but they often appropriated a portion of their domains to themselves. Every one knows what Charles Martel did in this way. But it is less generally known that this fact was repeated many times under the princes of his race, even the most devoted and submissive to the church. In 743, Carloman, brother of Pepin le Bref, decreed the following capitulary:

"We have resolved, with the counsel of the servants of God and the Christian people, because of the wars and the invasions of other neighbouring nations which menace us, to take for a while, and by way of usufruct, some portion of the ecclesiastical domains, and to keep them, with the permission of God, for the maintenance of our army, on the condition that every year there shall be paid to the proprietary church or monastery, a sol-that is to say, twelve deniers, for each farm; and that if he to whom the capital belongs dies, the church is to retake possession of it; and if necessity requires, or the prince orders it, this possession shall be renewed."

We read also in a capitulary of Louis le Debonnaire, in 823:

"We order the abbots and laymen to have observed in the monasteries which they hold from our gift, and according to the counsels of the bishops, all which relates to the religious life of monks, canons, &c."2

There were, then, laymen who received from the emperor certain monasteries in the way of benefices. Abbots of this kind were still more numerous under Charles le Chauve; they had the name of Abbacomites.

Doubtless the church was constantly protesting; and, upon the whole this fact passed, and properly passed, for an attack on her rights, a violent usurpation. Yet it was so frequent, so open, that an idea of some kind of royal right was almost attached to it; and the church more than once seemed to acknowledge, that in extreme need, a portion of her property might be thus temporarily applied to the service of the state. 6. It was not only with ecclesiastical administration and

12 Cap. Carlom. a. 743; Bal. vol. i. col. 149.

2 Cap. Lud. p. a. 823, § 8; vol. i. col. 635.

discipline that the temporal power occupied itself at this period. It interfered even in matters of dogma, and they were governed in its name. Three questions of this kind were raised in the reign of Charlemagne. I shall merely point them out. 1. The question of the worship of images, raised in the west by a canon of the second council of Nice, in 787. The Gallo-Frankish church rejected this worship, and all that seemed to tend to it. A special work, drawn up by order of Charlemagne, probably by Alcuin, entitled, Libri Carolini, was published against it. The favour given by the popes to this doctrine did not operate upon the Frankish bishops nor their master, and, in 794, the council of Frankfort formally condemned it. 2. The heresy of the Adoptians concerning the nature of Jesus Christ, of which I have already spoken, and which Charlemagne also formally condemned in three successive councils, at Ratisbon, in 792, at Frankfort in 794, and at Aix-la-Chapelle, in 799. 3. The question of an addition to the symbol as to the procession of the host. These, assuredly, are matters entirely foreign to the external government of the church—they are purely dogmatical. They were not the less regulated, if not by the civil power itself, at least under its authority, and with its intervention.

It may, therefore, be affirmed, without discussing the question of right, without examining whether it be good or ill that it should be thus, that at this epoch, directly or indirectly, the temporal power governed the church. The situation of Charlemagne in this respect was almost exactly the same as that of the king of England in the English church. In England, also, the civil assembly, or parliament, and the ecclesiastical assembly, or convocation, were long distinct; and neither one nor the other decided upon, or could do anything without the sanction of royalty. Whether the matter in hand was a council or a champ de mai, a dogma or a proclamation of war, Charlemagne equally presided at it: in neither case did they think of dispensing with him.

But at the same time that they governed the church, and for the very reason that they did not in any way fear her dependence, the first Carlovingians conferred immense advantages on her, and provided the most solid foundations for her future power.

1. It was by their support that the title was definitively

and generally established. You have seen that the church, relying upon the Hebrew customs, had at various different times, but without any great success, attempted to appropriate this rich revenue to herself. Charlemagne gave to the tithe the aid not only of his laws but of his indefatigable will. It was under his reign that it truly took root in the legislation and practice of the west.

2. He also extended the jurisdiction of the clergy. We read in one of his capitulations:

"We will that neither abbots, priests, deacons, nor underdeacons, nor any priests, be cited or taken before public or regular judges, for deeds concerning their person: let them be judged by their bishop, and so let justice be done them. If any complaint be carried against them before the judge concerning the domains of the church or their own property, let the judge send the complaint with one of his own messengers to the bishop, in order that he may do justice by the intervention of his advocate; and if there arise between them any dispute which they cannot or will not settle themselves, let the cause be carried before the court or the judge by the advocate whom the law gives the bishop, and let it there be decided according to the law, respect being always paid to what has just been said with reference to the person of the priest."

Whenever he had any purpose in interfering in the disputes of the bishops, whether among themselves or between them and the laymen, he made no hesitation in doing so. But in general, as the ecclesiastical jurisdiction was more enlightened and regular, he was more inclined to extend than to restrict it; and despite the submission of the bishops during his reign, they drew from it at a later period many useful precedents in favour of their independence.

3. In the civil order also, especially in reference to marriages and wills, the power of the clergy greatly increased at this period. I have already pointed out the cause from which it drew this important attribute. I have shown how, among the barbarians, the family was unfixed, unstable, and how it was the interest of a regular government to introduce more order and fixedness into it. It was more especially for this

1 Cap. Car. M. A. 801, § 39, vol. i. cap. 355.

reason that all questions of parentage, marriage, or wills, came under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction; and the church, by penetrating into the interior of families, acquired an enormous power.

4. Lastly, Charlemagne gave up to each church, under the name of mansus ecclesiasticus, a farm free from all kinds of charges and taxes; an important concession at an epoch when rural property furnished almost all the public expenditure.

Despite her momentary servitude, the church assuredly had here numerous fertile principles of independence and power. These were not long in developing themselves. During the early years of the reign of Louis le Debonnaire, the order of things established by Charlemagne continues, or nearly so it is still the emperor who governs, who, at least, appears to govern the church. But everything soon changes, and the church in her turn governs the emperor. I shall not enter with any detail into this subject. Every one knows that the usurpation of power by the clergy is the dominant characteristic of the reigns of Louis le Debonnaire and Charles le Chauve, up to the time when all general society, all central government, disappeared to give place to the feudal system. The facts are present to all minds. shall quote but one text, possibly more clear than all the facts put together. This is Art. 2 of the accusation brought the 14th of June, 859, before the council of Toul, by Charles le Chauve, against Wenilon, archbishop of Sens, who had separated from him to ally himself with his enemies. This denunciation of a bishop by a king seems an act of the resistance and independence of royalty; it is expressed in the following terms:

I

"By his election, and that of the other bishops, and with the will, consent, and acclamations of all the faithful of our kingdom, Wenilon, in his own diocese, in the city of Orleans, in the cathedral of Saint Croix, in presence of the other archbishops and bishops, consecrated me king, according to the ecclesiastical custom; and in calling me to reign, he anointed me with the holy oil, gave me the royal diadem and sceptre, and led me to the throne. After this consecration, I could not be cast from the throne, nor supplanted by any one—at least, not without having been heard and judged by

the bishops, by whose ministry I was consecrated king, and who have been named the throne of God. God rests upon

them, and it is through them that he decrees his judgments. I have always been, and am at present ready to submit myself to their paternal corrections, and to their castigatory judgments."

Truly the revolution which, in Frankish Gaul, had raised the priesthood above the empire, cannot be proved by a less suspicious and more formal testimony.

It was to the profit of the Gallo-Frankish episcopacy tha! this revolution seemed to be brought about; it was by the bishops that the temporal power was thus acquired and thus treated. But this sovereignty of the national church was not to subsist long, and it was not to the profit of the bishops that the church had overcome the state. It will be recollected that in seeking amidst the dissolution which invaded Gaul under the last Morovingians, what principles of civil and ecclesiastical regeneration became visible--that it was beyond the Alps, at Rome, that the principle of ecclesiastical regeneration appeared to us.2 There, in fact, was developed the power called upon to rule the church in general, and the Gallo-Frankish church in particular. It was in the hands of the papacy, not of the episcopacy, that the empire definitively fell. In the next lecture I shall place before you the history of the relations between the Gallo-Frankish church and papacy during this epoch, and you will see that it was papacy that took possession of the sovereignty on the decay of the Carlovingians.

Bal., vol. ii. col. 133.

19th Lecture