it seems in no unimportant degree to have contributed to increase and enlarge the social power of the priesthood. I allude to the vast multitudes who were numbered within the more immediate pale of the Church, and enjoyed the privileges of its ministers*. It was the custom of every European country to admit to clerical immunities many ecclesiastics who had never received ordination, and were to be distinguished from the laity only by their tonsure. It cannot be denied that this practice was in after times carried out to the most pernicious extreme1, and was indeed from the very first a wide deviation from the strict rules of Apostolic teaching; for it seems to have originated in the custom of conferring the tonsure upon children† as a pledge of future

* See Guizot, Civilisation en France, leç. 13. [t. ii. pp. 6—8]. 1 66 'Atque ita ordine perverso innumeri sunt inventi, qui se abbates pariter et præfectos sive ministros aut famulos regis appellant, qui, etsi aliquid vitæ monasterialis ediscere laici non experiendo sed audiendo potuerint, a persona tamen illa ac professione, quæ hanc docere debeat, sunt funditus exsortes; et quidem tales repente, ut nosti, tonsuram pro suo libitu accipiunt, suo examine de laicis non monachi sed abbates efficiuntur." Bede, Ep. ad Ecgbert. 13. Milo, whom Charles Martel intruded as bishop of Rheims instead of Rigobert, is spoken of as "sola tonsura clericus" (Frodoard, Hist. Eccl. Rem. lib. ii. cc. 12, 13. ap. Guizot, Coll. des Mém. v. 172-175. Couvenier, pp. 222, 225, 227).

That the tonsure of children was an ordinary practice is proved by the frequent statutes of the French kings against their being thus cut off from the world without the consent of their parents. Guizot, in the passage above referred to, seems to consider that the ceremony, when performed on children, implied their devotion to a monastic life; but the wording and context of

ordination, and to have been materially promoted by the numerous temptations which the social station of a Churchman offered to the ambitious and the oppressed; but its dangerous tendencies do not appear to have been the edicts we speak of appears to connect the tonsure rather with the secular than the regular clergy. ["Erat in Ecclesia S. Martini Turon. triplex ordo Canonicorum. Primus Presbyterorum et Diaconorum qui in stallis superioribus sedebant. Secundus Subdiaconorum aliorumque minorum ordinum, quibus locus erat in inferioribus stallis. Tertius ordo erat Canonicorum puerorum seu Clericorum simplicis tonsuræ, qui in scamnis considebant puerorum choralium more, dividebanturque inter se variis stationibus et officiis. Hi nomine Clericorum seu Canonicorum de Terra designabantur. (Ducange, s. v. Clerici, ii. 392 b, c.) The nun of Heidenheim, who describes the travels of her relation St Willibald, tells us that, when in his third year he was dangerously ill, his parents brought him to the cross with vows 'extemplo illum sub sacri ordinis primordio tonsuram accipere, sub cœnobialis vitæ disciplina, sub divinæ legis moderamine militando Christi famulatui subjicere," if he should recover. Accordingly, when he was five years old, and “jam tunc temporis germinabat sapientiæ virgultum," they "illustrem quantocius cum consultu amicorum carnaliumque propinquorum consilio ad sacræ cœnobialis vitæ instrumenta præparare atque perficere festinabant ;" and sent him to the abbey of Waltham, where the abbot Egwalt referred the question of his admission to the monks: "cui protinus omnis illa conventio fratrum simul responsum seu licentiam dabant, suæque voluntatis arbitrio hæc omnia fas fore dicebant, acceptumque illum ocius inter cœnobiale vitæ eorum consortium jungendo sociabant (Hodoeporicon S. Willibaldi, cc. 1, 2. ap. Canis. Lect. Ant. ii. 107. ed. 1725). Among the Excerptiones (95 ap. Thorpe, Anc. Laws, p. 334) of Ecgbert, archbishop of York, is the rule of Isidore, "Quicunque a parentibus propriis in monasterio fuerit delegatus, noverit se ibi perpetuo mansurum; nam Anna Samuel puerum natum et ablactatum Deo optulit; qui in ministerio templi permansit."]

called into play until the old canons were neglected, which excluded the dregs of society from the service of the altar. Meanwhile it materially strengthened the authority of the Church by surrounding it with devoted adherents, easily to be distinguished from the long-haired barbarians, and forming, as it were, a middle order between the sanctity of the ordained priesthood and the main body of the faithful. The ties which bound together the Roman and Germanic peoples were thus more than ever strengthened, since a large increase was effected in the numbers of that sacerdotal order which was most interested in the consolidation of society. Before we turn to consider another mode of clerical influence, we must answer one objection which might very speciously be urged against the correctness of the preceding conclusions. It might be argued that the natural and inseparable union of the priesthood with the old population was in so marked a manner the principal feature in their organization, and so much more cogent than the somewhat feeble bond which attached them to the barbarians, that it may more reasonably be supposed to have tended rather towards alienating the minds of the conquerors, and that we must consider the social amalgamation to have proceeded rather in spite of than in consequence of clerical interference.

Now, as if for the express purpose of convincing us how completely and how willingly the clergy bound themselves occasionally by a community of interests with the

conquerors, we possess records* which prove that it was by no means uncommon for dignitaries of the Church voluntarily to surrender the privileges of the Roman Law, and submit themselves to the barbarian codes.

one.

Such, then, was the great moral and social work of the Christian ministers during the gradual settlement of the European nations, but it was by no means their only Well worthy of remark in a less degree was their influence as the disseminators of the old Roman traditions and legislation among the new possessors of the soil, and in cherishing a spirit which manifested itself in the zeal for the restoration of almost forgotten offices and insignia, as when Theodoric attempted to restore among the Ostrogoths the fallen dignity of the Empire, and the Frank conqueror of Gaul assumed to himself the titles of Patrician and Augustus†: but a fuller investigation of these topics will fall more appropriately under a future division of our subject.

Thus far we have limited our view more especially to the period of national migration and final settlement, which was the forerunner of the medieval system. If we

See the passages quoted by Savigny, Gesch. d. Röm. Rechts. vol. i. p. 117, note 66. ["Fumagalli, Cod. dipl. Ambros. Num. 124. p. 502. a. 885.' 'Ego Leotpertus archipresbiter ecclesie S. Juliani qui professo sum legem vivere langubardorum.' Eben so der Bischoff Atto von Bergamo im J. 1072. Ughelli, [Italia Sacra.] t. iv. col. 447 [ed. 1719]. In Bergamo war es im zehnten und elften Jahrhundert so haüfig, dass man diese Ausnahme fast als Regel ansehen konnte. Lupi. p. 225.""]

† Sismondi, Hist. des Français, t. 1. p. 227.

now direct our attention to the moral condition of the European world during the age of comparative repose intervening between the re-establishment of more enduring governments and the accession of Charlemagne, we shall find satisfactory traces of the progressive operation of clerical authority; and our inquiries are materially facilitated by the circumstance that although the conditions of the different parts of Europe before the rise of the Carlovingian Empire varied widely, yet we may safely compare their relative progress by assuming them all to have diverged from one common center, to be found in those customs and modes of thought peculiar to all the Teutonic tribes. Let us take what is perhaps the most obvious and most frequently cited of all these barbarian characteristics. Nothing can be more completely indicative of an utterly uncultivated state than the penal code of the German nations; indeed we can scarcely term it a penal code, for in the ages of those primitive legislators crime, in the sense we attach to the word, had no existence. Every violation of what we denominate public justice was to them a mere civil offence; for national authority was never exerted in the punishment of guilt, and retribution depended solely on the power or inclinations of the injured party. This system of "weregilt" or penal composition was originally so inherent in all the barbarian tribes that we may assume their greater or less deviation from the ancient laws in this particular as a not inaccurate test of their progress in the humanizing arts. Now the Visigothic kingdom, as we have already seen,