ministrantes, atque obsequium exhibentes pauca numerositatis habebat."*

This passage gives a very complete idea of what was the extent of the king's domain at least, at the time when the mayors of the palace came to have authority, and we have no ground from history to presume that, before that period, it had ever been much more extensive. It seems, therefore, in every respect, a reasonable hypothesis, that the beneficia, which could not have been created by the kings of the Franks out of their own property, were, in fact, not created by them at all, but subsisted in Gaul at the time of the invasion of the Franks. These conquerors, no doubt, dispossessed many of the Gauls of their lands, but they did not dispossess all. The Salic and Ripuarian laws establish many regulations with regard to the Romans and Gauls who possessed lands, subjecting them to the same burdens as the Franks, of furnishing horses, provisions, and carriages in time of war. The Roman taxes and census being entirely abolished on the coming in of the Franks, the great ease which the Gauls found in being delivered from those burdens, to which their new services were comparatively light, very soon reconciled them to their new masters, and made them the most faithful of their subjects.

The authors who, according to the common supposition, hold these beneficia to have been granted by the kings of France out of their domain, involve themselves in another difficulty, for which they give but a very lame solution. The king, as may be supposed, being very soon divested of all his property, by the creation of a very few beneficia, it remains still to be accounted for, how these feudal tenures came to be universally prevalent, so that the whole property of the kingdom was held in that way for the fees created out of the domain could be divided only among a small number of the grandees; and the rest of the kingdom would be held as absolute and unlimited property. To account, therefore, for these tenures becoming universal, a very unnatural hypothesis is resorted to. Such of the subjects as held their lands in free property are supposed to have become sensible that it would be more for their advantage to hold them as beneficia, and to have surrendered them into the hands of the king, becoming bound to serve him in war, as the condition on which he was to restore them their property. The motive for this extraordinary

"The king had no other marks of royalty than long hair and a long beard. He sat on his throne and mimicked the airs of a sovereign, but in reality he had nothing else but the name. His revenue, except a small country-seat and a few servants, was no more than the precarious bounty that was allowed him by the mayor of the palace."-Eginhart, Vit. Car. Magni.

"The domain of the Frank monarchs became afterwards more extensive, and their residences in different provinces of the kingdom more numerous; but we cannot attach any great ideas of magnificence to these establishments, when we find Charlemagne regulating the number of hens and geese which each is to maintain."-Gibbon, cap. 59, note 88.

proceeding is said to have been, that they found it necessary to have a powerful protection in the king or chief. But what protection could this king or chief afford them, who was a man, perhaps, poorer than themselves; and who, according to this notion, had no other certain dependence for assistance from his grandees, than from the few to whom he had granted benefices out of his domains? Had not these unlimited proprietors a much more powerful incitement to preserve their independence, which made each a sovereign within his own territory; and were they not better protected by that general equality which subsisted among them, as well as by that natural jealousy, which, being felt alike by all, would incite them to combine in preventing any one from attempting unjust encroachments?

When we further take into view, that these beneficia were, originally, only grants for life, and held to be revocable, at all times, at the will of the grantor, the supposition of any free and unlimited proprietor surrendering his possessions, to be held by such a tenure, is wholly incredible. The exchange would have been that of liberty for dependence; absolute property for precarious possession.

This power of disposing of the fortunes of their subjects, by the revocation of their benefices, could not long continue under such weak princes as those of the Merovingian race. The more powerful of the beneficiarii soon determined to render their situation more secure. A measure of this kind could not, it may be presumed, have been attempted, if all the beneficiarii had been, as at first, Romans and Gauls; but at this time, by the changes made by the sovereigns, a great part of the benefices must have come into the hands of Franks. These, taking advantage of the weakness of the monarchy, and of the disorders which occupied the kingdom, during the contests between Gontran and Childebert, determined to seize that opportunity of establishing themselves in their possessions. In a council held to treat of a peace between these princes, the beneficiarii obliged them to consent in a treaty, that the king should no longer be at liberty to revoke benefices once conferred. This innovation, however agreeable to the greater part of the beneficiaries, was a check to the ambition of such men as either had no land, or thought they had too little; and these discontents afforded a pretext to succeeding princes for resuming their power of revocation. The treaty in question, however, was soon after solemnly confirmed in an assembly held at Paris.

Such was the state of the lands in France about the middle of the Merovingian period; part possessed in beneficia, or fiefs, which were now become hereditary, and part occupied by allodial, or absolute proprietors, the descendants of those Franks who received shares of land at the conquest. In that state of fluctuation, in which property of the former description remained, till it became

irrevocable in the manner mentioned, it is easy to perceive that allodial property was a much more valuable possession. Many of the allodial proprietors, during the perpetual civil wars of the Merovingian princes, found means greatly to increase the opulence and the extent of their territories. In those disorders, the castles and places of strength, where the more powerful lords resided, were naturally resorted to by the inhabitants of the territory. They were continually filled with retainers and dependents, who sought the protection of the lord or seigneur; which being of consequence in securing their possessions from invasion, they courted by making him annual presents, either of money or of the fruits of their lands. This connection became, in a very short time, that of vassal and superior; a tacit contract, by which the vassal was understood to hold his lands, upon the condition of paying homage to the superior, and military service when required-the symbol of which vassalage was a small annual present.

It was equally natural for the superior or seigneur to acquire a civil and criminal jurisdiction over his vassals. In those disorderly times, the dukes and counts, who were the judges in the provinces and districts, occupied with their own schemes of ambition, paid very little attention to the duties of their office. Many of them made a scandalous traffic of justice, oppressing the poor, and regulating their sentences according to the price paid for them. In this situation, the inferior ranks of the people naturally chose, instead of seeking justice through this corrupt channel, to submit their differences to the arbitration of their seigneurs, to whom they had sworn allegiance. By degrees, the vassals came acknowledge no other judge than their superior; and, in the territory of these seigneurs, the public magistrates soon ceased to have any kind of jurisdiction.

The seigneurs were now the sole judges, as well as the commanders or military leaders, of all who resided within their territories. Even bishops and abbots who possessed seigneuries exercised these powers, and led their men out to war. The whole kingdom was now divided between these seigneurs and the beneficiarii-that is to say, all lands were held in feu either of the prince or of subject superiors.

CHAPTER III.

Charlemagne-The new Empire of the West-Manners, Government, and Customs of the Age-Retrospective View of the Affairs of the Church-Arian and Pelagian Heresies-Origin of Monastic Orders-Pillar-Saints-Auricular Confession.

THE Merovingian race of the kings of France having come to an end by the usurpation of Pepin, and the deposition of Childeric III., a new series of princes, the descendants of the illustrious Charles Martel, filled the throne of France for a period of 253 years.

The injudicious policy of Pepin in dividing between two ambitious princes, his sons, a kingdom already filled with intestine disorder, must soon have involved France in all the miseries of civil war, had not the fortunate death of Carloman averted this calamity. Charles was now acknowledged monarch of all France; and in the course of a glorious reign of forty-five years, this prince, who, in more respects than as a conqueror, deserved the surname of Great, extended the limits of his empire beyond the Danube, subdued Dacia, Dalmatia, and Istria; conquered, and rendered tributary to his crown, all the barbarous nations as far as the Vistula or Weser; made himself master of the greatest part of Italy, and alarmed the fears of the empire of the Saracens. The longest of his wars was that with the Saxons. It was thirty years before he reduced to subjection this ferocious and warlike people.

The motive of this obstinate war, on the part of Charlemagne, against a people who possessed nothing alluring to the avarice of a conqueror, was ambition alone; unless we shall suppose that the ardor for making proselytes had its weight with a prince, whose zeal for the propagation of Christianity was a remarkable feature in his character,-a zeal, however, which carried him, far beyond the bounds which humanity ought to have assigned to it. Charlemagne left the Saxons but the alternative of being baptized or drowned in the Weser. Impartial history records with regret, that this conquest of the Saxons was stained with many instances of sanguinary ferocity on the part of the victor.

But the talents of Charlemagne were yet more distinguished in the civil and political regulation of his empire than in his extensive conquests. It was the misfortune of France, at this period, to be equally oppressed by the nobility and the clergy, -twc

*

powers equally jealous of each other, and equally ambitious of uncontrolled authority. Pepin, who was an able politician, had endeavored to mitigate the disorders arising from this source, by the system of parliaments or annual assemblies in the month of May, to which the bishops and abbots, together with the chief of the nobility, were summoned by the sovereign to deliberate on the situation of the state, the necessities of government, and the wants of the people. Charlemagne ordered these assemblies to be held twice in the year, in spring and in autumn. It was the business of the assemblies, in autumn, to deliberate only and examine. The interests of the kingdom relative to foreign princes, the causes of grievances and the sources of abuse, were investigated; and prepared for the consideration of the assembly in spring, the Champs de Mai, which had the sole power of enacting laws. This last assembly was not composed alone of the clergy and grandees. Charlemagne gave the people, likewise, a share in the system of legislation, by admitting from each county twelve deputies or representatives. These, with the nobility and clergy, formed three separate chambers, who each discussed, apart, the affairs which concerned their own order, and afterwards united to communicate their resolutions, or to deliberate on their common interests. The sovereign was never present, unless when called upon to ratify and confirm the decrees of the assembly, or to serve as a mediator, when the different branches could not come to an agreement.

Still further to harmonize the discordant parts of his empire, Charlemagne divided the provinces into different districts, each of which contained several counties. He abolished the ancient custom of governing them by dukes; and in their place he appointed three or four royal envoys, called Missi Dominici, to govern each province or Missa'icum, obliging them to an exact visitation of it every three months. These envoys held four courts in the year for the administration of justice; and the arrangement in which the business of these courts was conducted reflects the highest honor on the character of Charlemagne. causes of the poor were first heard, next those of the king, then the causes of the clergy, and lastly those of the people at large. Yearly conventions were also held by the royal envoys, where all the bishops and abbots, the barons and the deputies of the counts were obliged to attend personally, or by their representatives. At these conventions, the particular affairs of the province were treated of; the conduct of the counts and other magistrates examined, and the wants of individuals considered and redressed. At the general assembly or parliament, these envoys made their

The

The president Henault assigns as the reason for changing the time of meet ing from March to May, that cavalry being introduced into the army under Pepin, the former season of assembling was too early to allow them to obtain subsistence for their horses.