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are enough to convince us that the religious tendencies of the Teutonic nations were such as to render them especially prone to exalt the priestly order and office above every rival power. His words are Neque animadvertere neque vincire, ne verberare quidem, nisi sacerdotibus permissum; non quasi in pœnam nec ducis jussu, sed velut deo imperante, quem adesse bellantibus credunt." Nor were the clergy themselves slow in promoting a feeling, which, while it advanced the limits of their faith, afforded no small gratification to their secular ambition. They introduced the idea of necessary priestly intervention, not only in the more secret intercourse of man with his Maker and his conscience, but even in those temporal concerns which might have seemed to lie beyond their jurisdiction. Thus they availed themselves of that statute of Constantine concerning the manumission of slaves, to which we have already adverted, and we find in nearly every one of the barbarian codes a law requiring clerical interference in every such moral amelioration of the people. The Lombard monarch, Aistulph*, decrees that the priest should lead the slave round the altar, and, by absolving him from his earthly obligations, tread in the steps of Him who came to free the soul from a severer bondage, and, as if to prove that

"Sacerdos, quem designaverit, circa altare eum absque cujuscunque contradictione absolvat, et liber permaneat, quia maxima merces nobis esse videtur, ut de servitio servi ad libertatem deducantur, eo quod Redemtor noster servus fieri dignatus est, ut nobis libertatem donaret." Leges Langobardicæ, lib. v. t. 7. [? Aist. Leg. c. 3. ap. Cancian. Leg. Barb. t. i. p. 145.]

such a custom is not to be attributed to the accident of local position, a similar edict occurs in the code of the Visigoths*, the most geographically remote of all the Germanic tribes'.

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Leges Visigothorum, lib. v. tit. vii. c. 2. [ap. Cancian. Leg. Barb. t. iv. p. 125.] [The words are Si quis sane vult ex integro manumittere commune mancipium, presbyterum qui præsens est vel diaconum commonemus, ne hujusmodi libertatem se fieri præsentibus permittant, quia hæc manumissio stare non poterit. Si quis autem commune mancipium vult a jugo servitutis absolvere, prius cum consortibus suis dividat, et suæ vindicet potestati; aut certe, cum his qui ei consortes sunt, id fieri vel precio vel precibus elaboret et si sic voluerit præsente presbytero vel diacono manumittat, et libertas data firmetur. Quod si aliquis coram sacerdote vel diacono commune mancipium ex integro manumiserit, proprietatis suæ partem de mancipio amittat, et mancipium ad integrum consors ille qui non manumisit obtineat. Nam si partem suam, quæ in eodem mancipio illi debetur, absolvere voluerit, prohiberi non poterit "]

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Ducange (s. v. Manumissio) cites many authorities. beneficio S. Crucis, per Johannem Episcopum et per Albertum S. Crucis casatum, factus est liber Lambertus teste hac sancta ecclesia.” 'Vet. inscript. in Eccl. S. Crucis Aurelianensi.'" Denique semper fuit consuetudo, ut quicunque voluerint sursum aut ante altare Redemptoris, aut ante corpus beati Martialis, servos suos libertati darent." 'Conc. Lemovic. (anno 1031) Sep. 2;' and Ennodius, Opusc. 8; Gul. Malmesbur. Gest. Reg. Angl. 1. p. 33;' Formul. vett. Bignonii. c. 8 [al. ' Marc. Form. App.' ap. Cancian. ii. 251]; 'Anastas. Bibliothecar. in S. Julio PP.;' and Marculf. Formul App. c. 8 (ap. Cancian. ii. 250): to which may be added "Manumissiones in ecclesia sunt celebrandæ :" Capit. [Kar. et Ludov.] v. 32. [ap. Baluz. Cap. Reg. Franc. i. 831]; Liutprandi Leg. Langob. 11. c. 3 (ap Cancian. i. 103); ibid. iv. c. 5 (ap. Canc. i. 107); Leg. Ripuar. LVIII. § 1. [ap. Cancian. ii. 311]; Form. Leg. Rom. c. 12;' and ‘Burchard, 11. 28.' An English allusion to manumission at

Another yet more prominent instance of the intervention early claimed and exercised by the clergy is to be found in the right of ecclesiastical sanctuary, which the passage we have already cited from Augustine proves to have been practically acknowledged by barbarian superstition at its very earliest collision with the Roman Empire. The privileges of the clergy in this respect appear never to have attained under the rude chiefs of the 6th and 7th centuries that exorbitant height which has proved so pernicious in more refined nations; for they were universally resisted by the civil legislation*, or so far modified as to be no longer obnoxious to the claims of justice1. To the general reader in our days the phrase the altar occurs in King Wihtræd's Laws (viii. ap. Thorpe, Anc. Laws, p. 17).

* The Visigothic code ordained that a criminal under sentence of death should be given up, but the extreme penalty remitted (lib. v. tit. vi. 5, 16). The Anglo-Saxon laws allowed nine days of impunity; but the priest was usually compelled to surrender the suppliant on the payment of a certain fixed sum by his prosecutor or master. See Leges Inc Angliæ Regis, c. 5 ["Si quis mortis sit reus, et ad Ecclesiam confugiat, habeat vitam suam, et compenset prout jus eum doceat"], with Wilkins's note ad loc. [Leg. AngloSax. p. 15. Thorpe, Anc. Laws, p. 46.]

1 When Turketul, abbot of Croyland, was recovering for his monastery (anno 948) some of its lost rights, "antiquam loci impunitatem vel immunitatem nullo modo consensit acquirere, ne sceleratis et impiis refugium a publicis legibus videretur in aliquo præbere, et cum hujusmodi maleficis compelleretur vel in aliquo contra conscientiam suam cohabitare seu consentire” (Hist. Ing. ap. Gale, Rer. Ang. Scr. i. 40). The "antiqua loci impunitas" granted by King Witlaf in 833 seems to have been unlimited, extending to "quicunque in regno meo pro quocunque delicto

"ecclesiastical sanctuary" is suggestive only of the abuse of a custom which in early times was an acknowledged remedy for a weakness of the social state of Europe. It recalls to his recollection that troubled age of perverted feudalism, when the most guilty as well as the most innocent of homicides could find an assured refuge within the capacious limits of a church or a monastery, and when a numerous clergy presented, in this respect at least, an incentive, because a security, to vice. We must more correctly judge of the institution by its legitimate action during the days when it supplied the often necessary protection against sudden vengeance or illegal assaults, which it was vain to expect from the careless execution of imperfect laws; and we may view it as the reaction against the flagrant injustice of the statutes which admitted a pecuniary composition in cases of wilful murder: when a purer code was introduced, it became unnatural and repugnant to the well-being of society.

Another marked peculiarity of the period, and one which seems to imply more than any other either the reus inventus et legibus obnoxius fuerit” (ibid. p. 8). The privileges of sanctuary are much modified in Ethelred's Laws (c. vii. §§ 16-18 ap. Thorpe, p. 142). The canons (8 and 9) of the Council of Rheims [anno 625] (Frodoard, Hist. Eccl. Rem. lib. ii. c. 5. ap. Guizot, Coll. des Mém. v. 146. Couvenier, p. 188. Le Cointe, Ann. Ecc. Franc. ii. 752) simultaneously denounce excommunication on whosoever shall drag a fugitive from sanctuary without making oath not to kill, torture, or mutilate him, and require every criminal who obtains his life by the protection of the Church to make oath that he will do penance for his crime, and perform whatever shall be canonically imposed upon him.

constant intervention of the clergy in the ordinary affairs. of life, or the complete incorporation into the every-day life of the people of the doctrines they inculcated, is the frequency with which religious forms occur in all deeds and forms of ordinary processes. Numerous instances of this present themselves to us in one of the most curious compilations relating to the social condition of the barbarian nations, the Formulæ of the Monk Marculf, who seems to have published them towards the end of the 7th century. Even in such of these as relate to purely secular actions, the introduction of religious phraseology tells us how exclusively the intellectual world had fallen under clerical domination. Thus in the formula of servile manumission the following sentences * occur: 'Qui debitum sibi nexum relaxat servitium, mercedem in futurum apud Dominum sibi retribuere confidat. Igitur ego in Dei nomine, &c.1" It may, indeed, with

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* Marculfi Formula (ap. Baluz. Capit. Reg. Fr. [t. ii. coll. 423, 4]) lib. 1. cc. 32, 34. See also, as illustrations of the same custom, some Anglo-Saxon charters of the 9th century, quoted by Palgrave, English Commonwealth, Part 11. p. ccxx. &c.

1 The following additional examples are taken from Ducange (iv. 253b): "Quoniam omnis potestas a Deo est, et qui potestati resistit ordinationi Dei resistit, qui summa et mirabili dispensatione Reges et Duces cæterasque potestates in terra constituit, ut minor majori, ut consequens erat, serviret potestati; et inter eos quosdam dominos alios servos esse voluit, ita tantum ut et Deum domini et servi dominos venerarentur et amarent, juxta illud Apostoli, Servi obedite dominis carnalibus cum timore et tremore; et ad dominos; Domini, quod justum est et æquum est servis præstate, minas remittite, quia et vos dominum habetis in cœlo: si et vobis et illis dominatur, quicunque ipse, qui Rex et dominus

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