against simony in episcopal elections, assumes a tone of command very different from the filial respect with which the contemporary monarchs of France or Spain would have addressed their less aspiring prelates. In a word, during these the primitive ages of barbaric royalty, when the influence of the clergy over the sovereign was that of mind over brute force, priestly power was necessarily most important where the intellectual gloom was thickest; and however much weight we may attach to the commonplaces which assert the demoralizing and enervating effect of excessive clerical domination, we must confess that it is to the influence of sacerdotal advisers that must be referred whatever progress towards a more perfect political system contemporary history and legislation reveal to us during the period we are considering1. The clergy, possessing as they did a practical knowledge of the old Roman Law, were alone found capable of adapting to the countless requirements of a land old in civilization the clumsy barbaric codes of the interior of Germany.

towards the Holy See by the Romanized barbarians, the exact relations of spiritual and secular power, previously to the age of Hildebrand, seem to have depended rather on the character of individual popes and monarchs than on any fixed ideas of supremacy entertained by one or the other of the two powers.

1 Clovis gave St Remigius as much land as he could compass while the king was saying his mid-day prayer, yielding in this matter to the prayer of the queen and the desire of the inhabitants, who complained of being overburdened with exactions and contributions,' (Frodoard. Hist. Eccl. Rem. i. 14, ap. Guizot. Coll. des Mém. v. 51, Couvenier, p. 69) ;—the Church, as usually in the middle ages, being the better landlord.

M

We have already observed the evident marks of clerical hands in the prefaces to the revised editions of the ancient Frankish Laws, and the earliest capitularies of the Merovingian monarchs betray the same powerful influence. The first constitution* of a Frank sovereign which has come down to us is an exhortation to the final extirpation of lingering idolatrous customs from the land; and the most cursory perusal of the edicts promulgated by the immediate successors of Clovis will convince us how large a share of the legislative energies of the State was occupied in providing for the discipline and pecuniary interests of the Church;-a fact which can scarcely be attributed to any other cause than the overwhelming weight of priestly advisers with the sovereign and the nation. Again, if any deductions may be drawn from verbal niceties among a barbarous people, we find that in the treaty of Andelot, between Guntramn king of Burgundy and Childebert II. (A.D. 587) †, not only are religious phrases and ecclesiastical stipulations introduced in an abundance which betrays the hand of a clerical secretary, but in the mention of the royal advisers the sacerdotal functionaries take precedence of the secular Indeed it hardly needed such evidence as this to persuade us that an enlightened and acute priesthood among a politically ignorant nation must soon attain a power not confined to spiritual things alone1.

ones.

Const. Childeberti de abolendis Reliquiis Idololatriæ, A.D. 554.

(ap. Baluz. Cap. Reg. Fr. [t. i. coll. 5—8.])

+ Baluz. Capit. Reg. Franc. t. i. coll. 1–16.

The dispute between Clothaire and his son Dagobert as to the

But in order to examine to the greatest advantage the complicated workings of the clerical body on the Teutonic states as they increased in civilization and became associated with the remnants of Roman dominion, we may investigate somewhat more minutely the process as exemplified in one nation, and that the most politically enlightened of the barbarian tribes, the Visigoths. The “Forum Judicum," (subsequently known as the Breviarium Alaricianum), or collection of the statutes published by the Spanish monarchs till the Saracen conquest, presents to us a far more lively view of the amalgamation of Roman and Germanic polity, than we can obtain from any other quarter; clerical influence accordingly is throughout more prominently displayed than in any other legal compilation of the period. And, from the peculiar

division of the kingdom was adjusted "electis ab his duobus regibus duodecim Francorum proceribus, ut eorum disceptatione hæc finiretur intentio; inter quos et domnus Arnulfus pontifex Mettensis cum reliquis episcopis eligitur, qui benignissime, ut sua erat sanctitas, inter patrem et filium pro pacis loquebatur concordia" (Fredegarii Chronicon, c. 53). "Cum pontifices et universi proceres regni sui pro utilitate regia et salute patriæ conjunxissent," &c. (c. 55). Similar instances of bishops acting habitually as the king's counsellors, and co-operating with the "proceres" and cæteri leudes" in important state affairs, especially in reference to the succession, occur repeatedly in the same chronicle (cc. 41, 44, 56, 58, 75, 76, 89). So Pepin of Landen, mayor of the palace, took as his habitual adviser Arnulf bishop of Metz (who before becoming bishop had been himself mayor of the palace), and after his death Chunibert bishop of Cologne (Vita Pipini Ducis, ap. Guizot, Coll. des Mém. iii. 380, 381; Du Chesne, Hist. Fr. Scr. i. 594 B, C.).

circumstances of the Spanish Church and monarchy, we may justly consider that we have in it such a picture of clerical intervention in the affairs of Government as we could find in no other contemporary nation.

Spain, under the later Roman Emperors, had enjoyed a degree of prosperity surpassing that of any other province. Her rich municipalities gloried in the political and literary distinctions of her sons, for there were few European lands which could boast such names as Trajan, Hadrian, and Theodosius; and we may be assured that on the dislocation of the Empire the towns of Iberia and Bætica did not sink to the degraded level of the other divisions of the civilized world. Hence it naturally followed that, when the Visigothic chiefs established their sway, they found themselves in contact with numerous Roman citizens, headed and guided by a powerful body of clergy.

Sidonius Apollinaris has drawn the following picture, couched in language which in its day must have passed for epigrammatic elegance, of King Euric, the founder of the Visigothic constitution, which does not lead us to conclude that the priesthood found much favor with that rough and energetic sovereign* :-" In concilio jubet; in consilio tacet; in ecclesia jocatur; in convivio prædicat; in cubiculo damnat; in quæstione dormitat. Implet quotidie altaria reis, carceres clericis; exultans Gothis, insultansque Romanis, illudensque præfectis, colludensque numerariis; leges Theodosianas calcans, Theodorici* Ep. ii. 1.

anasque proponens." However, if the Teutonic princes of Spain set themselves in array against the clergy, they must soon have found themselves overmatched, for in the seventh century they scantily shared with the Church that supreme power which they had been unable to wrest from it. And the contrast between the military and political weakness of Spain and its eminence among the other Germanic nations in every branch of civilization is a sufficient token of the decay into which the Goths had fallen, and of the simultaneous activity of the intellectual principle as represented by the clergy. Indeed, throughout, the Visigothic constitution was a strange medley of the autocratic and the so-called theocratic elements. The great national councils which assembled at Toledo applied themselves, as soon as they had been inaugurated with all the pomp of a religious ceremony, to the ecclesiastical affairs of the realm, and seemed to look upon the civil legislation as merely a secondary share of the great religious work committed to their hands. The predominance of the ecclesiastical element, as well as the changeless stability of the national character, is attested by the stringency of the statutes against Jews and Heretics, foreshadowing the horrors of the Inquisition. But our opinion concerning the fruit borne by clerical power must be formed not so much from such edicts as these as from the accidental allusions occurring throughout the code: in which we may clearly discern the moral integrity and elevation which we have already traced,