第 97 页

But a better administration having been established under the third race gave the clergy leave to augment their possessions; when the Calvinists started up, and having plundered the churches, they turned all the sacred plate into specie. How could the clergy be sure of their estates, when they were not even safe in their persons? They were debating on controversial subjects while their archives were in flames. What did it avail them to demand back of an impoverished nobility those estates which were no longer in possession of the latter, but had been conveyed into other hands by different mortgages? The clergy have been long acquiring, and have often refunded, and still there is no end of their acquisitions.

11. State of Europe at the Time of Charles Martel. Charles Martel, who undertook to strip the clergy, found himself in a most happy situation. He was both feared and beloved by the soldiery; he worked for them, having the pretext of his wars against the Saracens. He was hated, indeed, by the clergy, but he had no need of their assistance.[85] The Pope, to whom he was necessary, stretched out his arms to him. Every one knows the famous embassy he received from Gregory III.[86] These two powers were strictly united, because they could not do without each other: the Pope stood in need of the Franks to assist him against the Lombards and the Greeks; Charles Martel had occasion for the Pope, to humble the Greeks, to embarrass the Lombards, to make himself more respectable at home, and to guarantee the titles which he had, and those which he or his children might take. It was impossible, therefore, for his enterprise to miscarry.

St. Eucherius, Bishop of Orleans, had a vision which frightened all the princes of that time. I shall produce on this occasion the letter written by the bishops assembled at Rheims to Louis, King of Germany, who had invaded the territories of Charles the Bald;[87] because it will give us an insight into the situation of things in those times, and the temper of the people. They say[88] that "St. Eucherius, having been snatched up into heaven, saw Charles Martel tormented in the bottom of hell by order of the saints, who are to sit with Christ at the last judgment; that he had been condemned to this punishment before his time, for having stripped the church of her possessions and thereby charged himself with the sins of all those who founded these livings; that King Pepin held a council upon this occasion, and had ordered all the church-lands he could recover to be restored; that as he could get back only a part of them, because of his disputes with Vaifre, Duke of Acquitaine, he issued letters called precaria[89] for the remainder, and made a law that the laity should pay a tenth part of the church-lands they possessed, and twelve deniers for each house; that Charlemagne did not give the church-lands away; on the contrary, that he published a capitulary, by which he engaged both for himself and for his successors never to make any such grant; that all they say is committed to writing, and that a great many of them heard the whole related by Louis the Debonnaire, the father of those two kings."

King Pepin's regulation, mentioned by the bishops, was made in the council held at Leptines.[90] The church found this advantage in it, that such as had received those lands held them no longer but in a precarious manner; and moreover that she received the tithe or tenth part, and twelve deniers for every house that had belonged to her. But this was only a palliative, and did not remove the disorder.

Nay, it met with opposition, and Pepin was obliged to make another capitulary,[91] in which he enjoins those who held any of those benefices to pay this tithe and duty, and even to keep up the houses belonging to the bishopric or monastery, under the penalty of forfeiting those possessions. Charlemagne renewed the regulations of Pepin.[92]

That part of the same letter which says that Charlemagne promised both for himself and for his successors never to divide again the church-lands among the soldiery is agreeable to the capitulary of this prince, given at Aix-la-Chapelle in the year 803, with a view of removing the apprehensions of the clergy upon this subject. But the donations already made were still in force.[93] The bishops very justly add that Louis the Debonnaire followed the example of Charlemagne, and did not give away the church-lands to the soldiery.

And yet the old abuses were carried to such a pitch, that the laity under the children of Louis the Debonnaire preferred ecclesiastics to benefices, or turned them out of their livings[94] without the consent of the bishops. The benefices were divided among the next heirs,[95] and when they were held in an indecent manner the bishops had no other remedy left than to remove the relics.[96]

By the Capitulary of Compiègne[97] it is enacted that the king's commissary shall have a right to visit every monastery, together with the bishop, by the consent and in presence of the person who holds it; and this shows that the abuse was general.

Not that there were laws wanting for the restitution of the church-lands. The Pope having reprimanded the bishops for their neglect in regard to the re-establishment of the monasteries, they wrote to Charles the Bald that they were not affected by this reproach, because they were not culpable;[98] and they reminded him of what had been promised, resolved and decreed in so many national assemblies. In point of fact, they quoted nine.

Still they went on disputing; till the Normans came and made them all agree.

12. Establishment of the Tithes. The regulations made under King Pepin had given the church rather hopes of relief than effectually relieved her; and as Charles Martel found all the landed estates of the kingdom in the hands of the clergy, Charlemagne found all the church-lands in the hands of the soldiery. The latter could not be compelled to restore a voluntary donation, and the circumstances of that time rendered the thing still more impracticable than it seemed to be of its own nature. On the other hand, Christianity ought not to have been lost for want of ministers, churches, and instruction.[99]

This was the reason of Charlemagne's establishing the tithes,[100] a new kind of property which had this advantage in favour of the clergy, that as they were given particularly to the church, it was easier in process of time to know when they were usurped.

Some have attempted to make this institution of a still remoter date, but the authorities they produce seem rather, I think, to prove the contrary. The constitution of Clotharius says[101] only that they shall not raise certain tithes on church-lands;[102] so far then was the church from exacting tithes at that time, that its whole pretension was to be exempted from paying them. The second council of Macon,[103] which was held in 585, and ordains the payment of tithes, says, indeed, that they were paid in ancient times, but it says also that the custom of paying them was then abolished.

No one questions but that the clergy opened the Bible before Charlemagne's time, and preached the gifts and offerings in Leviticus. But I say that before that prince's reign, though the tithes might have been preached, they were never established.

I noticed that the regulations made under King Pepin had subjected those who were seized of church lands in fief to the payment of tithes, and to the repairing of the churches. It was a great deal to induce by a law, whose equity could not be disputed, the principal men of the nation to set the example.

Charlemagne did more; and we find by the capitulary de Villis[104] that he obliged his own demesnes to the payment of the tithes; this was a still more striking example.

But the commonalty are rarely influenced by example to sacrifice their interests. The synod of Frankfort furnished them with a more cogent motive to pay the tithes.[105] A capitulary was made in that synod, wherein it is said that in the last famine the spikes of corn were found to contain no seed,[106] the infernal spirits having devoured it all, and that those spirits had been heard to reproach them with not having paid the tithes; in consequence of which it was ordained that all those who were seized of church lands should pay the tithes; and the next consequence was that the obligation extended to all.

Charlemagne's project did not succeed at first, for it seemed too heavy a burden.107 The payment of the tithes among the Jews was connected with the plan of the foundation of their republic; but here it was a burden quite independent of the other charges of the establishment of the monarchy. We find by the regulations added to the law of the Lombards[108] the difficulty there was in causing the tithes to be accepted by the civil laws; and as for the opposition they met with before they were admitted by the ecclesiastic laws, we may easily judge of it from the different canons of the councils.

The people consented at length to pay the tithes, upon condition that they might have the power of redeeming them. This the constitution of Louis the Debonnaire[109] and that of the Emperor Lotharius, his son, would not allow.[110]

The laws of Charlemagne, in regard to the establishment of tithes, were a work of necessity, not of superstition -- a work, in short, in which religion only was concerned. His famous division of the tithes into four parts, for the repairing of the churches, for the poor, for the bishop, and for the clergy, manifestly proves that he wished to give the church that fixed and permanent status which she had lost.

His will shows that he was desirous of repairing the mischief done by his grandfather, Charles Martel.[111] He made three equal shares of his movable goods; two of these he would have divided each into one-and-twenty parts, for the one-and-twenty metropolitan sees of his empire; each part was to be sub-divided between the metropolitan and the dependent bishoprics. The remaining third he distributed into four parts; one he gave to his children and grandchildren, another was added to the two-thirds already bequeathed, and the other two were assigned to charitable uses. It seems as if he looked upon the immense donation he was making to the church less as a religious act than as a political distribution.

13. Of the Election of Bishops and Abbots. As the church had grown poor, the kings resigned the right of nominating to bishoprics and other ecclesiastic benefices.[112] The princes gave themselves less trouble about the ecclesiastic ministers; and the candidates were less solicitous in applying to their authorities. Thus the church received a kind of compensation for the possessions she had lost.

Hence, if Louis the Debonnaire left the people of Rome in possession of the right of choosing their popes, it was owing to the general spirit that prevailed in his time;[113] he behaved in the same manner to the see of Rome as to other bishoprics.

14. Of the Fiefs of Charles Martel. I shall not pretend to determine whether Charles Martel, in giving the church-lands in fief, made a grant of them for life or in perpetuity. All I know is that under Charlemagne[114] and Lotharius I[115] there were possessions of that kind which descended to the next heirs, and were divided among them.

I find, moreover, that one part of them was given as allodia, and the other as fiefs.[116]

I noticed that the proprietors of the allodia were subject to service all the same as the possessors of the fiefs. This, without doubt, was partly the reason that Charles Martel made grants of allodial lands as well as of fiefs.

15. The same Subject continued. We must observe that the fiefs having been changed into church-lands, and these again into fiefs, they borrowed something of each other. Thus the church-lands had the privileges of fiefs, and these had the privileges of church-lands. Such were the honorary rights of churches, which began at that time.[117] And as those rights have ever been annexed to the judiciary power, in preference to what is still called the fief, it follows that the patrimonial jurisdictions were established at the same time as those very rights.

16. Confusion of the Royalty and Mayoralty. The Second Race. The connection of my subject has made me invert the order of time, so as to speak of Charlemagne before I had mentioned the famous epoch of the translation of the crown to the Carlovingians under King Pepin; a revolution, which, contrary to the nature of ordinary events, is more remarked perhaps in our days than when it happened.

The kings had no authority; they had only an empty name. The regal title was hereditary, and that of mayor elective. Though it was latterly in the power of the mayors to place any of the Merovingians on the throne, they had not yet taken a king of another family; and the ancient law which fixed the crown in a particular family was not yet erased from the hearts of the Franks. The king's person was almost unknown in the monarchy; but royalty was not. Pepin, son of Charles Martel, thought it would be proper to confound those two titles, a confusion which would leave it a moot point whether the new royalty was hereditary or not; and this was sufficient for him who to the regal dignity had joined a great power. The mayor's authority was then blended with that of the king. In the mixture of these two authorities a kind of reconciliation was made; the mayor had been elective, and the king hereditary; the crown at the beginning of the second race was elective, because the people chose; it was hereditary, because they always chose in the same family.[118]

Father le Cointe, in spite of the authority of all ancient records[119] denies that the Pope authorised this great change; and one of his reasons is that he would have committed an injustice.[120] A fine thing to see a historian judge of that which men have done by that which they ought to have done; by this mode of reasoning we should have no more history.

Be that as it may, it is very certain that immediately after Duke Pepin's victory, the Merovingians ceased to be the reigning family. When his grandson, Pepin, was crowned king, it was only one ceremony more, and one phantom less; he acquired nothing thereby but the royal ornaments; there was no change made in the nation.

This I have said in order to fix the moment of the revolution, that we may not be mistaken in looking upon that as a revolution which was only a consequence of it.

When Hugh Capet was crowned king at the beginning of the third race, there was a much greater change, because the kingdom passed from a state of anarchy to some kind of government; but when Pepin took the crown, there was only a transition from one government to another, which was identical.

When Pepin was crowned king there was only a change of name; but when Hugh Capet was crowned there was a change in the nature of the thing, because by uniting a great fief to the crown the anarchy ceased.

When Pepin was crowned the title of king was united to the highest office; when Hugh Capet was crowned it was annexed to the greatest fief.