order to regulate the discipline of the church, or for the good of the state, or for other affairs, we shall not refuse our consent to its meeting; provided, however, that information is first given us of it. The reason we write you this letter is, to forbid your attending this assembly." The monuments, the very acts of thirteen councils assembled in the sixth and seventh centuries, formally express that they were convoked by the order, and held with the consent of the king.' I do not doubt, however, but in this, the fact was very often contrary to the acknowledged right, and that a number of councils, especially the mere provincial councils, met and regulated their affairs without any authorization.

3d. Some writers have thought that the independence of the church also suffered from an institution which was more developed among the Franks than elsewhere; I mean the chapel of the king, and the priest who had the direction of it, under the name of Archicapellanus, Abbas regii oratorii Apocrisiarius. At first charged only with the exercise of worship in the interior of the palace, this superior of the chapel assumed gradually more importance, and became, to speak in the language so little applicable of our own times, a kind of minister of ecclesiastical affairs for the whole kingdom; it is supposed these were managed almost entirely by his intermediation, and that by his means royalty exercised a great influence over them. It may be that this influence was real at certain times, under such or such a king, under Charlemagne, for example; but I very much doubt that in general,

Châlons, in 650.

Among others, M. Planck, in his History of the Constitution of the Christian Church (in German), a work of rare science and impartiality. See vol. ii., 147.

and of itself, the institution was efficacious; it would serve rather the power of the church over the king, than that of the king in the church.

4th. There was something more real in the restrictions to which, at this epoch, the ecclesiastical privileges were subjected. They were numerous and important. For example, it was forbidden any bishop to ordain a free man as priest without the consent of the king.' Priests were exempt from military service; the king did not choose that free men should relieve themselves at will by means of this title. The church, therefore, at this epoch was peopled with slaves; it was especially among her own slaves, among the serfs and laborers of her domains, that she recruited herself; and this circumstance, perhaps, is one of those which have not least contributed to the efforts of the church for ameliorating the condition of the serfs. Many priests were taken from among them; and, independently of religious motives, they knew the miseries of their situation, they bore some sympathy for those who were plunged in it. In criminal matters, the priests in the west had not obtained the privilege which Heraclius had granted to those in the east; they were tried by the ordinary lay judges. In civil matters the clergy judged itself, but only in cases where the cause interested simply priests; if the difference was between a priest and a layman, the layman was not bound to appear before the bishop; on the contrary, he had the priest before his judges. With regard to public charges, there were certain churches whose domains were exempt, and the number of these daily increased; but the immunity was by no means general. Upon the whole, immediately after the invasion, in its principal relations with the temporal power, the clergy of Frankish Gaul seemed less independent, and invested with less privileges, than it was in Roman Gaul.

But means were not wanting both to regain in time advantages, and to assure herself of large compensations. By not in any way interfering in dogmatical points, that is, in the intellectual government of the church, the barbaric kings left to her the most fertile source of power. She knew how to draw largely upon it. In the east, the laity took part in theology and in the influence which it conferred. In the west,

1 Council of Orleans, in 511, can. 6.

the clergy alone addressed itself to minds, and alone was master of them. It alone spoke to the people, and alone rallied them around certain ideas which became laws. It was by this means especially that it re-acquired power, and repaired the losses to which the invasion had subjected it. Towards the end of the epoch upon which we are occupied, this had already become visible. The church evidently recovered from the shocks which had been given her by the disorder of the times and the brutal avidity of the barbarians. She made her right of asylum acknowledged and consecrated. She acquired a kind of right of superintendence and revision over the lay judges of an inferior order. The consequences of her jurisdiction over all sins were developed. By wills and marriages, she penetrated more and more into the civil order. Ecclesiastical judges were associated with lay judges every time a priest was concerned in the suit. Lastly, the presence of the bishops, whether with the king, in the assembly of great men, or in the hierarchy of proprietors, assured them a powerful participation in the political order; and if the sovereign power meddled in church affairs, the church, in her turn, extended her action and power more and more into the affairs of the world.

This is the dominant character of this epoch, as regards the reciprocal situation of the civil and religious society. The temporal and spiritual powers approached, penetrated, and encroached more and more upon each other. Before the invasion, when the Empire was still erect, although the two societies were already strongly entwined with one another, still there was a profound distinction. The independence of the church was sufficiently complete in what directly concerned her; and in temporal matters, although she had much influence, she had hardly any direct action except upon the municipal system, and in the midst of cities. For the general government of the state, the emperor had his machinery all prepared, his councils, magistrates, and armies; in a word, the political order was complete and regular, apart from the religious society and its government. After the invasion, amidst the dissolution of the political order, and the universal trouble, the limits of the two governments vanished; they lived from day to day without principles, without settled conditions; they encountered everywhere, clashing, confounded, disputing the means of action, struggling together in darkness and by chance. Of this irregular co-existence of temporal

and spiritual power, this fantastical entanglement of their attributes, these reciprocal usurpations, this uncertainty as to their limits, all this chaos of church and state, which has played so great a part in our history, which has brought forth so many events and theories, it is to the epoch which now occupies us that the origin must be assigned; that only is its most striking feature.

In our next lecture we shall occupy ourselves with the internal organization of the church, and the changes which happened in it during the same period.

THIRTEENTH LECTURE.

Of the internal organization and state of the Gallo-Frankish church, from the sixth to the eighth century-Characteristic facts of the Gaulish church at the fifth century-What became of them after the invasion-The exclusive domination of the clergy in the religious society continues-Facts which modify it: 1. Separation of ordination and tenure; priests not ecclesiastics-2. Patronage by laymen of the churches which they founded-3. Oratories, or particular chapels-4. Advocates of the churches-Picture of the general organization of the church-Parishes and their priests-Archpriests and archdeacons Bishops-Archbishops-Attempts to establish the patriarchates in the west-Fall of the archbishops-Preponderance and despotism of the episcopacy - Struggle of the priests and parishes against the bishops-The bishops triumphant-Despotism corrupts them-Decline of the secular clergy-Necessity for a reformation.

WE have seen what were the relations between the church and the state, and their principal modifications, in Frankish Gaul, from the sixth to the eighth century. We shall now examine the peculiar and internal organization of the church at the same epoch; it is curious and full of vicissitudes.

It will be recollected that a religious society may be constituted according to two principal systems. In one, the faithful, the laymen, as well as the priests, take part in the government; the religious society is not under the exclusive empire of the ecclesiastical society. In the other system, power belongs to the clergy alone; laymen are strangers to it; it is the ecclesiastical society which governs the religious society.

This fundamental distinction once established, we have seen that in each of these two great systems, totally various modes of organization might be developed: where religious society governed itself, for example, it might be-1st, that the local associations were united in one general church, under the direction of one or more assemblies, where the ecclesiastics and the laity were together; 2dly, that there should be no general and sole church, that each particular congregation, each local church should govern itself; 3dly, that there should be no clergy, properly so called, no men invested with permanent spiritual power; that the laity should fulfil the religious functions. These three modes of organization have