ministers. A large portion of the clergy who were suspected by the bishops, accordingly, placed themselves under the patronage of the lay society, and there exercised an influence formidable to the official clergy. In vain the English church pursued her adversaries, even into the interior of families; when tyranny is forced to penetrate so deep, it soon becomes enervated, or hastens towards its ruin: the inferior nobility, the high bourgeoisie of England, defended their chaplains with the most persevering energy; they concealed them, they changed them from house to house; they eluded or they braved the episcopal anathemas. The bishops might manoeuvre, oppress; they were no longer the only, the necessary clergy; the population harboured in its breast a clergy foreign to the legal church, and more and more at enmity with it. From the sixth to the eighth century, the danger was not the same; the bishops had to fear neither schism nor insurrection. Stil the institution of the chaplains had an analogous effect: it tended to form an inferior clergy, less closely united to the body of the church, nearer to the laity, more disposed to share their manners, in fine, to make common cause with the age and the people. Accordingly, they did not cease attentively to overlook and curb the chaplains. They, however, by no means destroyed them; they dared not attempt it: the development of the feudal system even gave to this institution a fixity which at first was wanting to it: and this was also one of the ways by which the laity regained that influence in the government of the religious society, which its legal and internal constitution refused to it.

4thly. The bishops themselves were constrained to open another way to it. The administration of the temporal affairs and property of the church, was often a source of embarrassment and danger to them; they had not only differences to decide, and suits to maintain, but, in the fearful dis order of the time, the property of the church was exposed to continual devastations, engaged and compromised in numerous quarrels, in private wars; and when it was necessary to make a defence, when the church, in behalf of her domains or her rights, had some robbery to repel, some legal proof, perhaps even, in some cases, a judicial combat to maintain, pious menaces, exhortations, excommunications even did not always suffice; she wanted temporal and worldly arms.

In order to procure them, she had recourse to an expedient. For some time past certain churches, especially in Africa, had been in the habit of selecting defenders who, under the name of causidici, tutores, vice-domini, were charged with the duty of appearing for them before justice, and of protecting them adversus potentias divitum. An analogous necessity, and one far more pressing, led the churches of Frankish-Gaul to seek among their neighbouring laity a patron who, under the name of advocatus, took their cause in hand and became their man, not only in judicial disputes, where they had need of him, but against any robberies which might threaten them. From the sixth to the eighth century, the advocates of the church did not yet appear with the development nor under the forms which they received at a later period, in the feudal system; we do not as yet distinguish the advocati sagati, or armed, from the advocati togati, charged merely with civil affairs. But the institution was not the less real and efficacious; we find numerous churches choosing advocates; they were careful to take powerful and brave men; kings sometimes gave them to churches who as yet had no advocates, and the laity were thus called in to participate in the temporal administration of the church, and to exercise an important influence over her affairs.

It was generally by granting them certain privileges, especially in giving them the usufruct of some domain, that the churches thus solicited the support, and paid the services of some powerful neighbour.

We may already see, if I may so express myself, four doors opened to religious society to enter the ecclesiastical society, and there exercise some power; the separation of ordination and tonsure, that is to say, the introduction into the church of many clerks who were not ecclesiastics; the rights attached to the foundation and to the patronage of churches; the institution of private oratories; and lastly, the intervention of advocates in the administration of the temporal interests of the church; such were the principal causes which, at the epoch which occupies us, combated the exclusive domination of ecclesiastical society over religious society, and weakened or retarded its effects. I might point out many others which I omit, because they were less general and less evident. A priori, such a fact was easy to presume: this

separation of the governing and the governed could not be so absolute as the official institutions of the church at this epoch would lead us to suppose. If it had been so, if the body of the faithful had been strangers to the body of priests to such a degree, and deprived of all influence over its government, the government, in its turn, would have soon found itself a stranger to its people, and deprived of all power. It must not be supposed that servitude is complete wherever the forms or even the principles of tyranny are found. Providence does not permit evil to be developed in all the rigour of its consequences; and human nature, often so weak, so easily vanquished by whomsoever wishes to oppress it, has yet infinite ability and a wonderful power for escaping from the yoke which it seems to accept. There can be no doubt but that, from the sixth to the eighth century, the religious society bore that of the ecclesiastical society, and that the separation of the clergy and the people, already a source of much evil, one day was to cost both of them dearly; but it was much less complete than it appeared; it only took place with a crowd of restrictions and modifications which alone rendered it possible, and alone can explain them.

II. Let us now enter into the bosom of ecclesiastical society itself, and let us see what became of its internal organization from the fifth to the eighth century, especially of that preponderance of the episcopacy which in the fifth century was its dominant characteristic.

The organization of the clergy at this epoch was complete, and almost the same, at least in its essential forms, as it has remained up to modern times. I can therefore place it before you in its ensemble; you will so better follow the variations.

The clergy comprehended two orders, the minor orders and the major orders. The first were four in number: the acolytes, the porters, the exorcists, and the readers. They called major orders, the under-deacons, the deacons, and the priests. The inequality was great; the four minor orders were preserved scarcely more than in name, and out of respect for ancient traditions; although they were reckoned as clergy, they did not, truly speaking, form a part of it; they had not imposed upon them, they were not even recommended to celibacy; they were looked upon rather as servants than as members of the clergy. When, therefore, the clergy and

the ecclesiastical government of this epoch is spoken of, it is only the major orders that are meant.

Even in the major orders the influence of the first two named, the under-deacons and deacons, was weak; the deacons were occupied rather in administering the property of the church, and the distribution of her alms than in religious government properly so called. It is to the order of priests, truly speaking, that this government was confined; neither the minor orders, nor the two others of the major orders, really participated in it.

The body of priests were subject, in the first six centuries, to numerous and important vicissitudes. The bishop, in my opinion, ought to be considered as its primitive and fundamental element; not that the same functions, the same rights, have always been indicated by this word; the episcopacy of the second century greatly differed from that of the fourth; it is no less the starting point of ecclesiastical organization. The bishop was, originally, the inspector, the chief of the religious congregation of each town. The Christian church took birth in towns; the bishops were its first magistrates.

When Christianity spread into the rural districts, the municipal bishop no longer sufficed. Then appeared the chorepiscopi, or rural bishops, moving, ambulatory bishops, episcopi vagi, considered, sometimes as the delegates, sometimes as the equals, the rivals even of the metropolitan bishops, and whom the latter attempted at first to subject to their power, and afterwards to abolish.

They succeeded therein: the rural districts once Christian, the chorepiscopi in their turn no longer sufficed: something more fixed, more regular, was necessary; something less contested by the most influential magistrates of the church, that is to say, the metropolitan bishops. Then parishes were formed; each Christian agglomeration at all considerable became a parish, and had a priest for its religious. head, naturally subordinate to the bishop of the neighbouring town, from whom he received and held all his powers; for it seems that originally parish priests acted absolutely only as representatives, as delegates of the bishops, and not in virtue of their own right.

The union of all the agglomerated parishes around a town, in a circumscription for a long time vague and variable, formed the diocese.

separation of the governing and the governed could not be so absolute as the official institutions of the church at this epoch would lead us to suppose. If it had been so, if the body of the faithful had been strangers to the body of priests to such a degree, and deprived of all influence over its government, the government, in its turn, would have soon found itself a stranger to its people, and deprived of all power. It must not be supposed that servitude is complete wherever the forms or even the principles of tyranny are found. Providence does not permit evil to be developed in all the rigour of its consequences; and human nature, often so weak, so easily vanquished by whomsoever wishes to oppress it, has yet infinite ability and a wonderful power for escaping from the yoke which it seems to accept. There can be no doubt but that, from the sixth to the eighth century, the religious society bore that of the ecclesiastical society, and that the separation of the clergy and the people, already a source of much evil, one day was to cost both of them dearly; but it was much less complete than it appeared; it only took place with a crowd of restrictions and modifications which alone rendered it possible, and alone can explain them.

II. Let us now enter into the bosom of ecclesiastical society itself, and let us see what became of its internal organization from the fifth to the eighth century, especially of that preponderance of the episcopacy which in the fifth century was its dominant characteristic.

The organization of the clergy at this epoch was complete, and almost the same, at least in its essential forms, as it has remained up to modern times. I can therefore place it before you in its ensemble; you will so better follow the variations.

The clergy comprehended two orders, the minor orders and the major orders. The first were four in number: the acolytes, the porters, the exorcists, and the readers. They called major orders, the under-deacons, the deacons, and the priests. The inequality was great; the four minor orders were preserved scarcely more than in name, and out of respect for ancient traditions; although they were reckoned as clergy, they did not, truly speaking, form a part of it; they had not imposed upon them, they were not even recommended to celibacy; they were looked upon rather as servants than as members of the clergy. When, therefore, the clergy and