master, and a freedman of this kind, known as libertus or lidus, remained in a position of close dependence upon his former master. He could, it is true, plead in the courts and enter into binding agreements, but he paid his patron a yearly fee known as the lidimonium, and if he died without issue his patron became his heir. The freedman usually retained the land which he had cultivated as a slave, but instead of being a servilis holding it became a lidilis holding.

On the large estates there was a third class of holding, the mansi ingenuiles. These were held by the coloni, the descendants of the former Roman coloni. Theoretically these coloni were free, but they were bound to their holdings; they could not quit them without the permission of the owner, and if they ran away they were brought back by force. But, on the other hand, so long as they paid their rent, they could not be expelled from their holdings and might cultivate them as they chose. They thus form an intermediate class between the slaves who were tied to one place and the freemen, to whom all roads stood open.

The freemen might belong either to the conquering race, the Franks, or the conquered race, the Gallo-Romans; and the two races were under different laws. The Salic law fixes the wergeld of a Salian Frank at two hundred solidi, that of the Roman at one hundred only. But we must not conclude from this that there was a great gulf fixed between the two races. Where both parties to a case were Gallo-Romans, they were judged according to the Roman law; when a Gallo-Roman was accused by a Frank, judgment was still given according to the Roman law; it was only in a case where a Frank was the defendant that the Salic law was applied, and it is quite natural that this law should be more severe upon the murder of a man of the same race than on that of a Roman. Besides, the further we advance in Merovingian history, the more the two races become intermingled. The Franks admired the Roman civilisation and endeavoured to assimilate it; they learned the common language of Gaul, which was in process of becoming Romanic; they even prided themselves on learning to speak pure Latin. The GalloRomans, on their part, adopted the military customs of the barbarians. They frequently gave Germanic names to their children. Both nations were Christian, and the common faith contributed to bring them together.

In theory all these freemen were equal, but little by little distinctions arose among them. In default of a nobility with hereditary privileges, there grew up an aristocracy, potentes, priores, who exercised a powerful influence. These great men belonged generally to the ancient Gallo-Roman senatorial families, who held vast estates and possessed great wealth. From these families the king chose the great officers of state and the people of the cities chose their bishops; thus there was added to their wealth political power, or the veneration attaching to

the sacred office of the priesthood. The Franks who possessed large estates became assimilated to these Roman senators and there thus grew up an aristocracy composed of members of the two races.

In consequence of the troublous times which were the rule in Gaul in the seventh century, the poor and the weak could not depend on the protection of the State, and sought protection from one or other of these powerful personages. They put themselves under his mundeburdis as it was called in Germanic; they "commended" themselves to him, according to the expression borrowed from Roman usage, and this expression is suitable enough, for they became in fact clients of these great men. The patron undertook to maintain his clients, to support them in law cases, to further their interests; in return, the client promised to serve his patron on all occasions, to defend him if he were attacked, and to take the field along with him if he attacked anyone else. Each of these great personages had thus under his orders a more or less numerous body of men. To mark these new social conditions new terms were created, or a new sense was given to ancient terms. The protector was called the senior; the client was called vassus. In the Salic law the term vassal simply meant a slave attached to the personal service of his master; at the close of the Merovingian period it always means one of these voluntary dependents. Those who felt the need of protection could "commend" themselves not only to wealthy private persons but also to royal officers, to the dukes and counts, to the officials of the palace; but above all they could commend themselves to the king himself. In that case the sovereign exercised a double authority over them; first, his public authority as king, and secondly a more special protection, parallel, in so far, to that of the seignior. In time the strength of the king came to depend in large measure on the number of his vassals. The subjection of the individual to the State was replaced by a personal subjection to the king, and the population of the country came to be composed of groups of men bound to one another by personal ties. Thus we find the germs of the feudal system already present in the seventh century.

A time was to come when to this subordination of persons there should be added a subordination of lands. In order to understand this evolution, which was to have so great a historical importance, we must first examine the conditions on which property was held.

With the exception of the towns the soil of Gaul was divided, in the Merovingian period, into large estates, called villae or fundi. These estates usually bore the name of their original holder; thus the villae called Victoriacus had belonged to a man named Victorius, and the modern villages which have descended from these villae have kept the old names. Variously transformed according to the district in which they lie, they are known to-day as Vitrac, Vitrec, Vitré, Vitrey or Vitry. Similarly villae bearing the name Sabiniacus have become our villages

152

The Merovingian Villa

of Savignae, Savignec, Sévigné, Savigneux. Many of these estates, especially in the north and east, changed their names after the invasions, taking the names of their barbarian owners. Thus Theodonis villa, Thionville, Ramberti villare, Rambervillers, Arnulfi curtis, Harcourt, Bodegiseli vallis, Bougival near Paris. In the seventh century some estates took the name of the saint to whom the church was dedicated: Dompiere, Dommartin, St Pierre, St Martin. Some villae again took their names from some particular variety of trees or plantations; Roboretum has become Rouvray, Rouvres; Rosariae and Cannaberiae have given us the names of our modern villages Rosières and Chennevières. It often happened that through sale, exchange, or division among brothers, a villa was divided between several owners, but it none the less retained its unity and organisation.

The lands of the villa were divided into two portions. One, consisting of the lands lying round about the house of the owner, was farmed directly by him. The other portion was divided up into lots or holdings (mansi), of which the owner gave the use to his slaves, his lidi, or to freemen; whence comes the distinction between mansi serviles, lidiles and ingenuiles, of which we have spoken above. Each tenant cultivated his holding for his own profit, but in return for its use was obliged to pay a rent to the owner and to render him certain services. The houses occupied by the tenants were either isolated, in the mountainous districts, or grouped together within a small area. A villa was self-sufficing; besides the cultivators there were the workmen who made or repaired the tools and implements. There was a mill and a wine-press which served the whole population of the villa, and often there was a forge also. It had its own chapel, of which the priest (often born on the estate) was appointed by the master, with the consent of the bishop. The woods surrounding the villa remained in possession of the landowner, but he gave the tenants rights of user. Over all the dwellers on the estate he exercised a seigniorial jurisdiction.

There still existed, no doubt, alongside of the great estates or villae a number of small estates belonging to freemen. But these small estates tended to disappear in the course of the seventh century. The fact was that the small proprietors were unable to defend their estates; they had no inducement to sell them, for money would have been of little value to them; accordingly they "commended themselves" to some great man of the neighbourhood, handing over their property to him. He in turn gave them the use of it for life, and thus they were at lest certain of occupying it in security until the end of their days. Previously they had held their lands ex alode or de alode parentum, by inheritance from their ancestors, with the right of using it as they chose; henceforth they held it per beneficium, in consequence of a grant made by the great seignior. When agreements of this kind became frequent, two varieties of landed property were distinguished, allodial lands which

were held by the owner in person, and "benefices," of which the use was granted by a large proprietor to another person during the lifetime of the latter.

Many circumstances contributed to multiply these benefices. The Church, which had large estates and could not get them all cultivated. by its serfs, lidi and coloni, let parts of them to freemen, who cultivated them, and at the death of the tenant the land returned, in an improved condition, into the hands of the Church. This mode of tenure was already known to the Roman law (precarium). It sometimes happened that in exchange for a grant of this kind, the grantee made a gift to the Church of an estate of similar value belonging to himself. Thenceforward he had the usufruct of both estates, that of the Church as well as his own; but at his death the Church took possession of both. The grantee had the advantage during his life of a doubled income, and on his death the Church doubled its property. But it often happened that the Church, which was, as we know, very powerful, received the lands of private persons in the manner described without adding anything of its own, only conceding to the former owner a life-use of the property. Thus in various ways the allodial lands disappeared, and benefices became every day more numerous.

Up to this point we have seen the beneficiaries solicit the benefice and take the initiative in obtaining it. These beneficiaries remained bound by ties of gratitude to their benefactor, they exerted themselves to serve him and marched with him when he went to battle; they were his rassi. Before long a man's power was measured by the number of his vassi, the army of his clients; and then the great men, in order to increase their clientage, and consequently their influence, began themselves to offer benefices to those whom they desired to attach to themselves and gain as adherents.

The king, or the Mayor of the Palace who replaced him, needed to be able to count on the great men for the wars, whether foreign or civil, in which he engaged. Obligation towards the State was too abstract a conception to be understood, and the mere sense of duty was not strong enough to keep the great men loyal. The king therefore began to distribute lands to these great men. At first he gave them absolutely, but before long these lands were assimilated to the benefices. This evolution took place especially at the time when Charles Martel laid hands upon the property of the Church and distributed it in his own name to his warriors. The property of the Church was inalienable, it could not be given as an absolute possession. The warriors were only the life-tenants of it, and at their death it reverted to the Church. These estates were therefore simply ecclesiastical benefices, granted by the king or the mayor. Once this precedent had been established, estates granted by the king from his own lands were granted on the same conditions, merely for the lifetime of the grantee.

Another great change took place about the same time. One reason why Charles Martel made grants of ecclesiastical property to his warriors was that they had now to support great expense. They served in his armies no longer as foot soldiers but as cavalry, and their equipment was very costly. The revenue of the lands which were granted to them served as an indemnity against the expenses of military service. Thus it came to be considered that the benefice carried with it the obligation of military service. Under Charles the Great, the holders of royal lands were bound to be first at the muster; and before long it was an understood thing that, when a private person who had granted benefices marched to the wars, all his beneficiaries, who were also his vassals, must accompany him. Thus at the end of the Merovingian period the characteristics of the later fief are taking shape. The eleventh century fief is the direct descendant of the eighth century benefice, of which we have just traced the origin.

Another characteristic of the fief is that the holder of it exercises thereon all the powers of the State: he levies taxes, administers justice, and summons the men of the fief to follow him to war. Now even in the Merovingian period on some of the great domains the State resigned a portion of its rights to the proprietor or seignior, and thus we find present, from this time onward, all the germs of the feudal system. We have seen how great were the powers of the count and the other royal officials : they often abused these powers, and the proprietors of the great estates complained to the king of their tyranny. In many cases the king listened to their complaints and gave them charters of immunity, forbidding all public officials to enter their estates, to claim right of lodging, to try causes, to levy the fredus or other impost, or to compel the men to attend the muster of the royal army. Thenceforward the men of this privileged territory had nothing more to do with the agents of the government; the agents of the proprietor took their place; and before long the proprietor himself levied the former state-taxes, judged cases in his private court, and regarded it as within his competence to deal with all offences committed upon his domain. He led his men in person to join the royal army, and he was naturally tempted to use them also in the prosecution of his private quarrels. If we remember the extent of some of the domains, which comprised a number of villae and were sometimes as large as a modern canton, we see how great was the area which was withdrawn from the authority of the royal officials, if not from that of the king himself. The estates which enjoyed these immunities were veritable seigniories. Alongside of the institutions of the State there had thus arisen another set of institutions which came into collision with the former and brought about the decay of the authority of the State. All the elements of feudalism-commendations, benefices, and immunities -are in existence without its being possible to say that feudalism is as yet constituted, because the elements are not combined into a system.