nation, "recently," as the words are, "converted to the Catholic faith," prides itself on its freedom from the taint of Arianism, and on having been specially moved by the Lord to seek the key of knowledge:-phrases which it is most natural to attribute to a clerical pen, and which may at any rate be admitted as evidence that a certain reverence for the forms of Christianity had been diffused through the nation, and that its conversion had speedily been followed by a revision of its old constitution, and the introduction of a stricter morality. Again, we possess stringent letters addressed by King Athalaric (who succeeded his father Theodoric on the throne of the Ostrogoths, A.D. 526) to Pope John II. on the subject of simony*, which we can scarcely believe to be the spontaneous productions of an imbecile sovereign, who was brought to his grave by continued excess at the age of sixteen; nor was it probable that a mere secular adviser would presume to interfere in matters of ecclesiastical discipline: we must rather look upon this as another proof of the early prevalence of the clerical element among the barbarian nations. But the relations of the priesthood to the civil government must be reserved for our future investigation: we are occupied at present in ascertaining their intimate connection with the Teutonic life, as we have done with the Roman life, of the period.

armis, firma pacis fœdere......nuper ad Catholicam fidem conversa, immunis ab hæresi, dum adhuc teneretur barbarie, inspirante Deo inquirens scientiæ clavem" [ap. Canciani Leg. Barb. t. ii. pp. 9, 10]. * Canciani Leges Barb. t. 1. p. 14.

It must not be imagined that, because they stood, as we have represented, at the head of the ancient population, who constituted the mass of the inhabitants in the Western European lands, they were on that account possessed of an insignificant influence over the proprietors of the soil: on the contrary, they held over their new converts a moral sway far more cogent than even the partly political authority exercised by them over their fellow-citizens. Their rude lords could not look with indifference on the ministers of that religion which received them in its embrace at their entry into the world, and deposited their bodies in the grave at the close of their career; which exercised the most unflinching watchfulness over every action of this life, and claimed a yet more awful jurisdiction over the soul in the life to come. The sacred person of the servant of God, who dispensed the deep mysteries of the faith, and was protected by the safeguard of a venerable code hidden from barbarian knowledge, was looked upon with feelings of filial reverence, to which the sophisticated sons of civilization must ever be strangers. The hallowed precincts of the Christian Temple, and the yet more inviolable sanctity of the altar, honoured alone, as they imagined, by the incarnate presence of the Almighty, was surrounded in their eyes with a glory more brilliant than that which had once encircled the mystic sanctuary of Hertha, or had clothed the Treninsule, the Germanic Palladium of their idolatrous progenitors. Indeed the expressions of Tacitus *

*De Germania, c. 7.

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'.

* 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 "]

1

"Ex

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. II. c. 3 (ap Cancian. i. 103); ibid. iv. c. 5 (ap. Canc. i. 107); Leg. Ripuar. LVII. § 1. [ap. Cancian. ii. 311]; 'Form. Leg. Rom. c. 12;' and Burchard, 11. 28.' An English allusion to manumission at

6

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