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TWENTY-SIXTH LECTURE.

Object of the lecture-Internal history of the Gallo-Frankish church, from the middle of the 8th century to the end of the 10th-Anarchy which pervaded it in the first half of the 8th century-Twofold principle of reform-The reformation is actually undertaken by the first Carlovingians: 1. By the civil power; 2. By the ecclesiastical power-Special reforms-Order of canons-Its origin and progressReformation of the monastic orders by Saint Benedict d'AnianeThey change character-Preponderance of the temporal power in the Gallo-Frankish church at this epoch-Proofs-Still the church progresses towards its future preponderance-But it is not to the profit of its own government, of the bishops of France, that this progress is to turn.

I HAVE already given the history of the Gallo-Frankish church up to the accession of the Carlovingians, towards the middle of the eighth century. I then considered it under the two points of view to which all questions which may arise with regard to a religious society attach themselves; on the one hand, without, in its relations with the civil society, with the state; on the other, within, in its organization and internal government. And not only the church in general, but those two distinct elements, the priests and the monks, the secular clergy and the regular clergy, have been the subject of a twofold inquiry.'

It conducted us, you will remember, to this result-that at the commencement of the eighth century, the Gallo-Frankish church was a prey to an ever-increasing anarchy. Externally, far from simplifying and fixing itself, its relations with the state became more and more confused, disordered, uncertain; the spiritual power and the temporal power "lived from day to day without principles, without fixed conditions; they encountered everywhere, running against each other, confounding, disputing the means of action, struggling and meeting in darkness and at chance." Internally, in its own government, the situation of the church was no better

1 See the 19th Lecture.

2 See the 12th Lecture.

episcopacy had entirely usurped it; the inferior clergy in vain struggled to maintain some rights, to assure themselves some guarantees. And, after having usurped everything, the episcopal aristocracy itself fell into a powerless anarchy: scarcely were there any more councils, scarcely any more metropolitan power; egotism penetrated there as in civil society; each bishop governed his diocese at his will-despotic towards his inferiors, independent of his superiors and his equals. The monasteries presented almost the same phenomena. So that, taking all things together, a little before the middle of the eighth century, that which dominated in the heart of the church, as in the state, in Frankish-Gaul, was disorganization.

Still, at the same time that we recognized this fact, we caught a glimpse on the two banks of the Rhine, both for church and for state, of the first glimmering of another destiny. There were growing up together, on the one hand, that race of the Pepins which was to give Frankish-Gaul new masters; on the other, that Germanic church which, regularly and strongly organized under the influence of papacy, might serve for the reform of the other churches in the west, as a fulcrum and model.

It so, in fact, happened. Carlovingians, order and life we are about to be present at the same epoch, and from the There is no need of demonstration; it breaks forth on all sides. From Pepin le Bref to Louis le Debonnaire, it is impossible not to be struck with the movement of reform which speaks out and propagates itself in the Gallo-Frankish church. Activity and rule appear in it at the same time. The temporal government labors with all its strength to introduce them. Pepin and Charlemagne commenced by drawing the episcopacy out of the anarchy and indolence into which it had fallen; they restored the power of the metropolitans, frequently assembled the bishops, occupied themselves with giving back to ecclesiastical government its entirety and regularity. Towards 747, at the request of Pepin, pope Zachary sends a collection of canons to him. In 774, Adrian I. sends a second, much more complete, to Charlemagne and Charlemagne does not confine himself to circulating these codes of ecclesiastical discipline; he carefully watches over their observation; he causes new canons to be decreed; religious administration is evidently one of the

You have seen, under the first re-enter into civil government: the same fact in the church, at same causes.

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principal affairs of his government. He succeeded in reawaking in the church that general, regular activity which so long since had almost died away. Twenty councils only were held in the seventh century, and only seven in the first half of the eighth. Dating from Pepin, they once became frequent. The following is a table of those which met under the Carlovingian race :

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This fact alone attests the return of activity and life into ecclesiastical society; and this activity did not content itself with holding councils, with regulating the immediate and special affairs of the clergy; it extended itself to the wants of religious society in general; of all the Christian people, in the future as in the present. This was the time of the definitive improvement of the liturgy; writings upon the ecclesiastical offices, their celebration, their history, abound; and rules establish themselves in the train of these treatises. It is also the time when the greater part of the penitentials, or codes of ecclesiastical punishment, were drawn up, which regulated the relation between sins and penances; they often vary from diocese to diocese, and appear in great number before any had acquired the least extended authority. Then, also, homiliaries or collections of sermons for the use of priests and the faithful, were multiplied. In a word, everything at this epoch gives testimony of a great ardor for labor and reform, a reform which, whether pursued by the civil power, which concurred very actively in the government of the church, or by

the church itself, was applied to re-establish rule and progress in its own bosom.

Two special reformations, undertaken and accomplished by isolated individuals, the formation of the order of canons, and the re-establishment of rule among the monks, attest the same movement, and powerfully contributed to accelerate it.

About the year 760, Chrodegand, bishop of Metz, struck with the disorder which pervaded the secular clergy, and with the difficulty of governing the scattered priests, living isolately and each in his own fashion, undertook to subject those living in his episcopal diocese to an uniform rule, to make them live in common-in fact, to constitute of them a society analogous to that of monasteries. Thus arose the constitution of canons; the institutions of the times were its occasion, the monastic order its model. Chrodegand applied himself to render the assimilation as complete as he could. The rule, in thirty-four articles, which he gave to the first canons is almost literally borrowed from the rule of Saint Benedict. Labors, relaxations, duties, the whole employment of the time of the canons, are regulated in it; meals are to be taken in common, clothing to be uniform. It is true, a fundamental difference exists between the two orders; the canons may possess private property, while, with the monks, the monastery alone is possessed. But in the details of life the resemblance is minute, and it has evidently been sought.

The institution must have answered to the wants of the age, for it was rapidly propagated, Many bishops imitated Chrodegand; the organization of the clergy of episcopal churches into chapters became general; in 785, 789, 802, 813, we find the civil and ecclesiastical power eagerly sanctioning it. At length, in 826, Louis le Debonnaire, in a council held at Aix-la-Chapelle, had a rule of canons drawn up in 145 articles, which reproduced and extended that of Chrodegand, and he sent it to all the metropolitans of his kingdom, in order that it should everywhere be applied, and become the uniform discipline of churches.

It seems that this discipline encountered much resistance in the secular clergy; it deprived them of the disorderly liberty which they had so long enjoyed; it imposed an uniform and rather rough yoke upon them. But a circumstance to which most historians have paid but too little attention, almost every

where removed these obstacles, and powerfully favored the extension of the new order.

I have already observed,' that the possessions of the church in each diocese were at the disposition of the bishop, who administered and distributed her revenues almost alone and arbitrarily; so that the simple priests, and not only the priests dispersed through the country districts, but those of the episcopal city, of the cathedral church itself, depended entirely on the bishop for their support, for the first and most imperious wants of life. And as a great number of bishops gave themselves up to infinite disorders, and spent on their own account the revenues of the church, the existence of the priests was very miserable and precarious; poverty, even distress, was often their condition.

The evil was so real, that when many bishops wished to imitate what had been done by the bishop of Metz, to unite the priests of their cathedral in the same edifice, and make them live in common, the temporal and spiritual powers thought it their duty to interfere, in order to prevent this being done, unless there were means of subsistence, a secured livelihood for the new establishment. The council of Mayence ordered, in 813, that the reform should be carried out, "where there were the means;" and that of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 816, enjoined bishops in the admission of canons to regulate themselves according to the revenues of the church.

But this difficulty did not last long. When the people saw priests thus confined, disciplined, and leading a life as regular and severe as the monks, it felt a redoubled respect and fervor for them. Gifts flowed to chapters as well as to monasteries. Never, perhaps, had so many and so wellendowed churches been founded; most of the cathedrals were rapidly enriched, and many donations were especially addressed to the canons, now become an object of edification and admiration. Simple priests thus escaped, in many places, from the state of distress and dependence into which they had been cast; the secular clergy became favorable to the new order, although it bore its yoke; and the order of canons soon played a very important part in the movement of reformation of the church at this epoch.

At the same time, a new reformation of monks was accom

13th Lecture.

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