was the first to exhibit any approach towards a more correct penal legislation. In it first was the "weregilt" in any measure abolished, and truer ideas on the subject of crime inculcated on the people*. Their civil code, too, indicates a state of society far superior to that of the Burgundians or less polished Franks, and it contains, prefixed to its leading enactments, such general remarks on the principles of jurisprudence and the respective duties of a legislator and his subjects, as prove it to have been compiled by men of thought and philosophy. If we seek for the cause of so manifest a superiority, we shall find it in that extraordinary legislative and political authority of the clergy, which imparted to the great national councils of Toledo the mingled characters of Parliament and Convocation+, and which we shall more thoroughly examine when we have come to consider the political influence of the priesthood. And lest it should be imagined that the superiority of Visigothic jurisprudence was the consequence rather of a long course of unbroken tranquillity than of the maxims of Roman law transmitted through the clergy, we may enunciate this general proposition which appears to be supported by a comparison of the various European nations during the 6th and 7th centuries:-That, in proportion as each Germanic tribe, on establishing itself in its new dominions, 137 * See, e. g. lib. vi. tit. 5 [ap. Cancian. Leg. Barb. t. iv. pp. 142], where unintentional homicide is made expiable by a composition, but murder by capital punishment alone. + See Gibbon, c. 38. found itself in contact with a more or less organized clergy and submitted with greater or less willingness to the exhortations of its spiritual advisers, so was the rapidity of its subsequent progress from the rude enactments of former days to the scrupulous justice of Rome. In illustration of this, we find that the Burgundians, who of all the invading hordes, if we except the Visigoths, occupied a land most thickly teeming with Roman cities and rejoicing in the most numerous and thoroughly organized priesthood, possessed a code far surpassing in completeness and impartiality the rude statutes of their Frank neighbours. While in our own island, where, as we have already noticed, the whole fabric of Roman hierarchy had been most utterly demolished by the savage idolatry of the Saxon conquerors, and where the scanty privileges of the clergy placed them in a less dominant position than was enjoyed by their brethren either in France or Spain, the ancient ignorance and barbarism on the subject of penal ordinances held sway long after it had vanished from the continent of Europe1. From such an induction as this we seem to be fully justified in asserting, that to the clergy principally does Europe owe the disappearance of that pernicious notion which taught man to look upon himself as answerable to his injured 1 Thus the early part of Alfred's Laws, which consists of little more than adaptations of the Mosaic law, repeatedly ordains capital punishment (see in particular § 15. ap. Thorpe, Anc. Laws, p. 21); whereas in the later part (see § 9. Thorpe, pp. 30, 31, and §§ 27—31, pp. 35, 36) a pecuniary compensation is appointed for the same offences. fellow-creatures alone, and for the inculcation of that doctrine from which he learnt to anticipate in the awards of national justice the more severe retribution of the offended Deity. We shall be confirmed in this opinion if we examine that remarkable series of royal constitutions and national decrees, known as the Capitularies of the Frank kings. Such scanty edicts of the earlier Merovingian monarchs as have been preserved are filled with little else than bare repetitions of old barbarian laws from the East of the Rhine, with characteristic valuations of human life and limb, and are, on the whole, such as might reasonably be expected to emanate from an assembly of warriors. However, we learn from the contemporary chronicles that the first sovereigns of the Carlovingian race, animated by a far-sighted piety, entrusted to the clergy the supreme direction of the Champ de Mars assemblies: accordingly, the decrees headed by the names of Carloman and Pepin, while they profess to be produced by the joint wisdom of temporal and spiritual potentates, bear the scantiest marks of the former, while in every phrase they display the unceasing industry of the latter, and, instead of being framed after the model of the old unmeaning enactments, they tend to the establishment of a purer morality, and to the more complete organization of the Church and of the official responsibilities of its ministers*. * See in particular the decrees of the Council of Vermeric (held by Pepin I. A.D. 752) ap. Baluz. [Capit. Reg. Franc.] t. I. coll. 161-6. During the preceding pages our undivided attention has been given to the secular clergy, as we may now in strictness term them; and we have left unexplored a wide field of research, from which we may discover the means employed and the results achieved by the not less zealous and enterprising members of the monastic orders. In a previous section we have watched the progress of monasticism from its origin in the Egyptian deserts to its less congenial abodes among the recesses of the Apennines; and, notwithstanding all the inherent errors of the ascetic practice, we were led to the conclusion that a large portion of the Christian truth and knowledge which survived in a degenerate age had retired from a world more than ever abhorrent to its principles. But the protection which contemplative minds had sought from surrounding worldliness was more than ever needed to secure them against the more fatal assault of advancing barbarism. It stood them, indeed, in better stead against the latter than against the former; for the protecting walls of the cloister, and the yet more effectual safeguard of the religious awe which they inspired, could avert the roving hordes of a temporal foe, while they proved powerless against the more pernicious advances of sloth, luxury, and pride,— enemies whose pertinacity and success became every day more terrible; for, wherever monachism had spread, the defects of the system began to flourish and multiply with portentous rapidity, and everything was to be feared from those institutions which but a century before had presented to the Fathers of the Church such noble prospects. Such was the emergency, when from the Sabine hills echoed through the length and breadth of Europe the voice of reformation. It is impossible for any student of mediæval history, however prejudiced, not to gaze with admiration on the commanding grandeur of the great Benedict. All who have studied his history must look with an equal astonishment on the energetic simplicity of his work, and the widely spread multiplicity of its results. For he found the monastic life slothful, he left it actively employed in promoting civilization and religion. He found it wasting its capabilities on irrational exercises, he left it intent on rational occupations. He found it undisciplined and consequently loaded with spiritual arrogance, he left it guided (as far as such a system could be so) by a definite rule, and striving after a Christian humility. And for such a work as this it may well seem no unworthy recompense that he stands at the head of so illustrious a spiritual progeny. For not many years after the first establishment of the monastery at Monte Cassino the Benedictine order could reckon among its ornaments one* who, whether we consider the zeal with which he defended the interests entrusted to him or his yet greater success in extending the empire of the true Faith, merits well the epithet of "Great” which posterity has bestowed upon him. But Gregory, illustrious though he be in himself, is yet more associated to an English reader with the spiritual triumphs of another Benedictine, Augustine, through whom the knowledge of * See Mabillon, Annales Ord. S. Ben. t. 1. p. 163. |