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their servants (Ministerialen) and peasant dependents (Hintersassen) who were always laymen. The country needed their taxes, and the prince of the country as feudal lord required them to furnish mounted troopers.

One advantage which the ecclesiastical aristocracy had over the secular was that it was not hereditary, but rested on personal education and election. The son of an artisan might become pope, the son of a peasant an archbishop1.

formation.

But as time went on this predominance of the clergy and The Rethe aristocratic powers of the ecclesiastical princes and prelates was shaken and destroyed. The German Reformation of the sixteenth century struck a fearful blow at the secularised Church. With the spread of Protestantism ecclesiastical princedoms became temporal, sees were abolished, monasteries broken up, and religious orders dissolved. Before the Reformation there sat in the German Reichstag the three ecclesiastical princes, three other archbishops, and thirty-nine bishops. After the peace of Westphalia the number was reduced to three electoral princes, one archbishop (Salzburg), and twenty bishops. Only Swabia and the Rhine-provinces now retained their bench of prelates. The whole of the North and a good part of the South had rid itself of ecclesiastical sovereignty.

Even in the countries which had remained Catholic the change was only postponed. There was no part of Germany where ecclesiastical sovereignty survived the revolutionary movement at the beginning of this century. Even the electoral princes of the left bank of the Rhine were carried away by the storm, and their domains incorporated with France. The domains of the other ecclesiastical princes were granted by way of compensation to secular dynasties.

With the end of the Empire the ecclesiastical lords lost. their position as an imperial estate, and maintained an insecure position in certain provincial diets (Landstände). Once

1 Pope Gregory VII, himself the son of a carpenter, stated this clearly: 'Rome has become great among heathens and Christians quod non tam generis aut patriae nobilitatem quam animi et corporis virtutes perpendendas adjudicaverit.' Cf. Laurent, Étud. sur l'Hist. vii. p. 335.

England and France.

again, after many centuries, the episcopate became a purely ecclesiastical office, without political power. Their jurisdiction fell with their territorial sovereignty.

The Catholic clergy having thus lost their temporal position and power could no longer realise the mediæval ideal. Modern political feeling could not tolerate any subordination of laymen to clergy: it demanded universal obedience to the laws and the constituted authorities of the State. The time for clerical immunities and privileges was gone by; all were subject to one law, one jurisdiction.

The history of the clergy in England and France was somewhat similar. They had never acquired the same territorial sovereignty as in Germany, and in both countries the secular side of the State was more strongly asserted than in Germany. But the clergy were an estate: in England they sat with the lords temporal in the Upper House'; in France they formed a separate estate, the first in the kingdom. But the Reformation in England and the Revolution in France profoundly affected their position. The medieval immunities disappeared before the principle of common and equal obligation to the law (Rechtspflicht).

When Louis XVI summoned the States-General in 1789, the clergy voluntarily abandoned their separate position and anticipated the nobles in entering the National Assembly, which represented not the estates of the middle ages, but a body of free citizens.

Thus the medieval estate of the clergy was everywhere broken up. The great distinction between clergy and laity had lost its practical effect, and was no longer recognised by the State in its system of rights. The great mass of the clergy were merged in the middle classes, the high dignitaries of the Church in the aristocracy.

[The clergy, as a body, declined the position of a parliamentary estate, which was offered to them by Edward I. The Lords spiritual still sit with the temporal peers: but it is probable that in the middle ages they owed their seat rather to their secular position as tenants-in-chief than to their clerical dignity.]

CHAPTER X.

THE

II. THE NOBILITY.

A. The French Nobility.

became a

HE Patricians of ancient Rome formed a hereditary The old Nobility nobility of birth (Geschlechtsadel): but internal party of birth struggles early transformed it into a political aristocracy, based at Rome not on descent, but on the free choice of the people to public Political offices. This political aristocracy of the senatorial families Nobility of personal lasted through the Republic into the Empire. The old patrician merit. families, which in the time of Augustus had dwindled down to fifty, and very seldom received an addition (the families of the Emperors were in law always patrician "), still perhaps in fact, though no longer in law, formed the nucleus of this aristocracy; the ancient glory of their name, traditional experience in State affairs, often too their large property and personal connections, won them the respect to which they owed their place in the Senate. But besides these, the aristocracy was constantly renewed and quickened by the addition of eminent men, distinguished as generals, statesmen, orators, or lawyers, who under the Republic entered the Senate by election to public offices, under the Empire by the summons of the Emperor. Thus political merit and public distinction had become the basis of the later Roman nobility, which even at the time of its decadence retained a remnant of its bygone freedom and greatness.

Mæcenas' famous discourse1 on the Principate is an excellent Mæcenas'

a [Mommsen, Röm. Statsrecht, ii. p. 765.]

1 Dio Cass. lii. 14-40,

Ideal.

The French
Nobility.

The Merovingian

Period,

expression of the idea which Roman statesmen had of the aristocracy in imperial times. The Emperor's friend advises him to purge the Senate of the incapable members thrust upon it by the confusions of the civil wars, and to fill up the vacancies by careful nominations. He recommends him to reject no one on the score of poverty, but rather to supply poor and capable men with the needful means. In the choice of senators he should look not merely to Italy, but also to the allies, and even to the provincials, and so assemble round him the first men from among all the peoples of the empire, men marked by family, character or wealth, as leaders of the people, and should give them a share in public affairs and in the government of the world. To increase the number of eminent men that assembled in the Senate at Rome, would be to secure a better provision for the needs of the State and the loyalty of the provinces. The Equites, distinguished by their wealth, should form a lower aristocracy of wealth, composed of eminent men of the second rank. Further, that the sons of senators may be fit to succeed to the duties of their fathers, they must be worthily educated in the sciences and in

arms.

The history of the French Nobility is a very chequered one. We can distinguish the following periods, each with its special characteristics.

1. The foundation of the French Nobility belongs to the Merovingian period (481-752). Strangely enough the traces 481-752. of an old Frankish nobility of birth are very uncertain. But this period developed a nobility of personal fealty (ein persönlicher Treuadel), based mainly on the relation of the king to his people. Perhaps even here special regard was paid to the old families of nobles. But besides these, other free Franks and Germans were received by the king among his Antrustiones, and even Romans as guests of the king (convivae regis) received a similar rank. Sometimes persons of low birth, slaves and dependents, are found rising to the highest offices of the empire, and thus becoming nobles.

This Nobility then had grown out of very mixed materials. It was, at least for the most part (as Schäffner has shown in

detail 2), not a hereditary nobility, but a nobility of personal service, bound by an oath of fealty. The privilege of a higher Wergeld was a sign and a consequence of the higher value attached to its members. Beyond this its privileges in private law were few. But politically it was distinguished partly by the association of the position of an Antrustio with high offices of State, court posts, and ecclesiastical dignities, partly by participation in the King's Council and a prominent place at the national assemblies.

In the institution, as in the members who composed it, we find the same mixture of Romance and Teutonic elements. But the Teutonic element tended to gain the mastery. To this belong, (1) the personal tie of fealty to the king (trustis dominica), which was propagated by family custom and family interest, and was extended beyond to the vassals of other lords (Seniores); (2) the grant of royal benefices to the great nobles, mainly in the form of lands.

These two relations form the chief source of the later Feudal System.

2. The change in the royal dynasty was in great measure The Carothe work of a revolution in the nobility. The Carolingian Period, lingian Mayors of the Palace, as representatives of the king, put 752–987. themselves at the head of the powerful military nobility. They helped to confirm the nobles in their domains: and then with their aid they drove out the degenerate kings.

This movement, as Guizot has pointed out 3, found its main and constant support in northern France, in Austrasia, where the Germans were dominant, and which was hence called Francia Teutonica, as opposed to the Roman France of the South. The result was that the French Nobility received a distinct Teutonic stamp.

The Nobility of office and service became more and more a feudal nobility (Lehensadel) of Barons, Seniores, and Vassals, each of whom learnt to feel his independence within his own sphere. Thus the transition was made from the hierarchy of

2 Geschichte der Rechtsverfassung Frankreichs, i. p. 217 ff.
3 Essais sur l'histoire de France, p. 52 ff.

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