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The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy

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laymen were glad to make the bishop the arbiter of their differences ; they knew that they would find in him a judge more just and better instructed than the count. The Church could also give protection to malefactors; the criminal, once he had crossed the sacred threshold, could not be torn thence; it was commonly believed that frightful chastisements had smitten those who attempted to violate the rights of sanctuary.

It would be easy to shew how grossly immoral was the Frankish race the history of Gregory of Tours is filled with the record of horrible crimes - but at the same time they were profoundly credulous and superstitious. On Sundays, at the sound of the bells, they rushed in crowds to the churches. They frequently received the communion, and it was a terrible punishment to be deprived of it. Apart from the Church services the Franks were constantly at prayer. They believed not only in God but in the saints, whom they continually invoked, and they believed in their intervention in the affairs of this world. They were eager to procure relics, which had healing power. The Church had in its control sacraments, religion, healing virtue, and the bishop held the first place in the Church; he was felt to be invested with supernatural power, and the faithful held him in awe.

Above the bishop was the metropolitan. With a few rare exceptions, the metropolitan had his seat at the chief town of the Roman province. In the course of the fifth century, the province of Vienne was cut in two: there was one metropolitan at Vienne, another at Arles. The latter annexed to his jurisdiction the provinces of the Alpes Maritimae (Embrun) and of Narbonensis II (Aix). Thenceforward twelve metropolitan sees were distinguished: Vienne, Arles, Trèves, Rheims, Lyons (to which was united Besançon), Rouen, Tours, Sens, Bourges, Bordeaux, Eauze and Narbonne. The metropolitan had the right to convoke provincial councils, and presided at them. He exercised a certain oversight over the bishops of the province, and it was to him that it naturally fell to act as judge among them. His title was simply that of bishop: the title archbishop does not appear until quite the end of the Merovingian period. The authority of the metropolitans was subordinate to that of the Frankish Church as a whole, which had as its organs the national councils. These councils were always convoked by the king, who exercised much influence in their deliberations. We have the cannons of numerous councils held between 511 and 614, which give us a mass of information regarding ecclesiastical organisation and discipline. These canons are not much concerned with doctrine; they recall the clergy to their duties, safeguard the property of the churches against the covetousness of laymen, and censure pagan customs such as augury and sortes sanctorum.

The Frankish Church honoured the Papacy and regarded the bishop of Rome as the successor of St Peter, but the Papacy had no

C. MED. H. VOL. II. CH. V.

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Relations with the Papacy

effective power over this Church, except perhaps in the province of Arles. Reading the work of Gregory of Tours, which is so full of life and reflects so exactly the passions and ideas of the time, we do not find that the Pope plays any part in the narrative. The bishops are appointed without his intervention and they govern their churches without entering into relations with him. At the end of the sixth century, as we saw earlier, Gregory the Great maintained an active correspondence with Brunhild. He gives her advice, and his advice was, without doubt, listened to with respect. The pope takes no direct action, but he urges the queen to act. It is not difficult to see however that he was quite ready to supersede Brunhild in the task of directing the Frankish Church; he would like to make Candidus, who was the administrator of the papal patrimony in Provence, a kind of legate beyond the Alps. There can be no doubt that Gregory I, had he lived, would have succeeded by his able policy in re-establishing in Gaul the papal authority as it had been exercised by Leo I before the fall of the Empire. But after the death of Gregory in 604 relations between Rome and the Franks became very rare for more than a century. There are only one or two instances of such relations to which we can point. Pope Martin I (649-655), for example, requested the sons of Dagobert to assemble councils in order to combat the Monothelete heresy, which was supported by the Byzantine Emperors. Relations were not effectively resumed until the eighth century, but they were then to have an immense influence upon general history.

We have already seen how, in their opposition to the Emperors of Constantinople, the popes sought the aid of the Mayors of the Palace, and how this alliance was concluded. We have also noticed, in passing, how Boniface brought under the authority of the Holy See the Germanic races whom he converted to the Christian faith. But, besides this, with the aid of Carloman and Pepin (after 739), Boniface accomplished another task. After the death of Dagobert the Frankish Church had fallen into profound decadence, and Charles Martel had sunk it still lower by conferring bishoprics and abbeys on rude and ignorant laymen. These bishops and abbots never wore clerical vestments, but always sword and baldric. They dissipated the property of the Church and sought to bequeath their offices to their bastards. For eighty years no council was called. Every vestige of education and civilisation was in danger of being swamped. A complete reform of the Church was necessary in the interests of society itself. To Carloman and Pepin belongs the merit of having perceived this, and they entrusted this great work to Boniface. Once more a series of councils was held, in the dominions of Carloman as well as in those of Pepin; there was even a general council of the whole kingdom in March 745 at Estinnes in Hainault. The ecclesiastical hierarchy was restored, measures were taken against priests of scandalous life; the clergy were encouraged to

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become better educated. Above all, this reformed clergy was placed under the authority of the Papacy; the road to Rome became familiar to them. On the one hand there was a political alliance between the popes and the Mayors of the Palace; on the other relations were renewed between the clergy of what had been Gaul and the Papacy. Thus was recovered the idea of Christian unity in one sole Church under the authority of the Pope, as the successor of the apostle Peter.

We have hitherto spoken chiefly of the secular Church, but in even a summary account of the Church of the Merovingian period a place must be found for the monasteries. As early as the fifth century, before the conquest of Clovis, famous abbeys had arisen upon Gallic soil. Such were Ligugé near Poitiers, Marmoutier and St Martin in the territory of Tours, St Honorat on one of the islands of Lerins, St Victor at Marseilles. In the time of Clovis Caesarius founded in the town of Arles one monastery for men and another for women. Under Clovis and his successors monasteries rapidly increased in number. Childebert I founded that of St Vincent, close to the gates of Paris, afterwards to be known as St Germain-des-Près; Chlotar I founded St Médard of Soissons, while Radegund, the Thuringian wife whom he had repudiated, built Ste Croix of Poitiers. To Guntram is due the foundation of St Marcel of Chalon-sur-Saône, and the extension of St Benignus of Dijon. Private persons followed the example of the kings. Aridius, a friend of Gregory of Tours, founded on one of his estates the monastery which from his name was known as St Yrieix. All these monasteries were placed under the charge of the bishop, who visited them and if necessary recalled the monks to their duty. At the head of the household was placed an abbot, generally chosen by the founder or his descendants, but in some cases elected by the community, subject to the bishop's confirmation. Each monastery was independent of the rest, and had a rule-regula― of its own, based upon principles borrowed from the early monks in Egypt, from Pachomius, Basil and the writings of Cassian and Caesarius of Arles. The abbeys did not as yet form congregations obeying the same rule. Since they confined themselves to serving as a refuge for souls wounded in the battle of life, they had no influence on the outside world. They were not centres of the religious life radiating an influence beyond the walls of the cloister and exercising a direct action upon the Church. This type of monastic life was the creation of an Irish monk, Columbanus, who landed on the Continent about the year 585. He settled in the kingdom of Guntram, and established, in the neighbourhood of the Vosges, three monasteries, Annegray, Luxeuil (known in Roman times for its medicinal baths), and Fontaines. These three houses were under his direction and he gave them a common rule, which was distinguished by its extreme severity. Obedience was required of the monk "even unto death," according to the example of Christ, who was faithful to

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Columbanus and his Disciples

His Father even unto the death of the cross. The smallest peccadillo, the least negligence in service, was punished with strokes of the rod. The monk must have no possessions; he must never even use the word "my." This rule became common to all the other abbeys which were founded subsequently by Columbanus himself or his disciples. For Columbanus did not remain undisturbed within the walls of Luxeuil. Twice he was torn from his refuge by Brunhild, whose orders he refused to obey. He wandered through Champagne, and under his influence a monastery arose at Rebais and convents for women at Faremoutiers and Jouarre. Later he found his way to the shores of the Lake of Constance in Alemannia where his disciple Gallus founded the monastery which bore his name, St Gall. He ended his days on 23 November 615 in Italy, where the monastery of Bobbio claims him as its founder. Loyal disciples of his had reformed or founded in Gaul a large number of monasteries; in no similar period were so many founded as between the years 610 and 650. We can mention only the most famous - Echternach, Prüm, Etival, Senones, Moyenmoutier, St Mihiel-sur-Meuse, Malmédy, and Stavelot. Many of these monasteries received from one hundred to two hundred monks.

All these abbeys obeyed the same rule and were animated by the same spirit; they formed a sort of congregation. In general they declared themselves independent of the bishop ad modum Luxovensium. They chose their abbots and administered their property freely. Moreover these monks did not confine themselves within the walls of their monasteries; they desired to play a part in the Church. St Wandrille claimed that the monks should not merely be allowed to count the years which they spent in the cloister, but those also in which they travelled in the service of God. The disciples of Columbanus were preachers like himself; they proclaimed the necessity of penance, the expiation of every mistake according to a fixed scale, as in the rule of the monastery, and at this time penitentials began to be widely circulated. The sense of sin became very keen among the people, and they multiplied gifts to the Church in order to atone for their transgressions. The monks also became missionaries; each abbey was, so to speak, the head-quarters of a mission. St Gall completed the conversion of the Alemans, Eustasius abbot of Luxeuil converted the heretical Warasci in the neighbourhood of Besançon and went to preach the Gospel in Bavaria. But the very number of these monasteries caused the defects of the rule of Columbanus to be quickly perceived. This rule did not provide for the administration of the monastery; it did not prescribe, hour by hour, the employments of the day; then, again, it was too severe, too crushing, and often reduced men to despair. Now, about a hundred years earlier (c. 529), Benedict of Nursia had given to the monastery of Monte Cassino an admirable rule; this rule was not known in France until after the death of Columbanus and the remarkable growth of monasteries

Spread of the Benedictine Rule

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connected with him, but once known its advantages were soon recognised. All the questions which Columbanus had left unsettled here received a practical solution. It regulated the relations of the abbot with the monks and of the monks with one another; it prescribed the employments of the day and the hours to be divided between prayer, manual work, and study. Mystical speculations are left aside; there is something of the legal spirit of ancient Rome in these clearly-drawn precepts. The rule of St Benedict at first appeared as a rival alongside of that of St Columbanus; but after the great ecclesiastical reform associated with the name of Boniface it reigned alone; and a little later Louis the son of Charles the Great imposed it (817) upon all the monasteries of his realm. The impetuous torrent which Columbanus had let loose was thus turned into a wide channel, in which its waters could flow calmly.

Merovingian society was composed of remarkably definite gradations, each man having his fixed price, so to speak, marked by the wergeld. At the bottom of the scale was the slave. The Germans, as well as the Romans had possessed slaves, and their number was increased in the Merovingian period. After a war the prisoners were often reduced to servitude; many of these unfortunates belonged to the Slav race, and the name slave gradually took the place of servus. There were also slave-dealers who went to seek their human merchandise overseas; young Anglo-Saxons were much sought after on account of their beauty. Then again, a man who could not pay his debts, or a fine inflicted by the courts, fell into servitude; and a freeman who married a slave lost his freedom. Slaves were looked on as chattels; the master could sell them or give them away at his pleasure. Anyone who stole or killed a slave paid a fine of thrity solidi, just the same amount as was paid for stealing a horse, and this compensation was paid to the master: the slave was not considered to have any family. Slaves were often very cruelly treated by their masters; Duke Rauching for example made his slaves put out torches by pressing them against their naked legs. The Church however took up their cause; it declared unions between slaves which had been blessed by the priest to be legitimate, and earnestly exhorted masters not to separate husband and wife, parents and children.

Slaves could escape from their condition by enfranchisement. In the Merovingian period there were two kinds of solemn enfranchisement, that per denarium before the king, by which the former slave acquired the rights of a Frankish freeman, and that of the Church, by which he became a free Roman. In both cases he was discharged from all obligation towards his former master, but remained in a certain dependence on the king, who fell heir to the property of slaves if they had no children born after their enfranchisement. But usually the slave was simply freed by a written statement to that effect given by the

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