The churches
acquired very considerable property. We find that our kings gave them
great seigniories, that is, great fiefs; and we find jurisdictions
established at the same time in the demesnes of those churches. Whence
could so extraordinary a privilege derive its origin? it must certainly
have been in the nature of the grant. The church land had this privilege
because it had not been taken from it. A seigniory was given to the
church; and it was allowed to enjoy the same privileges as if it had
been granted to a vassal, it was also subjected to the same service as
it would have paid to the state if it had been given to a layman,
according to what we have already observed.
The churches had therefore the right of demanding the payment of
compositions in their territory, and of insisting upon the fredum; and
as those rights necessarily implied that of hindering the king's
officers from entering upon the territory to demand these freda and to
exercise acts of judicature, the right which ecclesiastics had of
administering justice in their own territory was called immunity, in the
style of the formularies, of the charters, and of the capitularies.
[164]
The law of the Ripuarians
[165]
forbids the freedom of the
churches
[166]
to hold the assembly for administering justice in any
other place than in the church where they were manumitted.
[167]
The churches had therefore jurisdictions even over freemen, and held their
placita in the earliest times of the monarchy.
I find in the Lives of the Saints
[168]
that Clovis gave to a certain
holy person power over a district of six leagues, and exempted it from
all manner of jurisdiction. This, I believe, is a falsity, but it is a
falsity of a very ancient date; both the truth and the fiction contained
in that life are in relation to the customs and laws of those times, and
it is these customs and laws we are investigating.
[169]
Clotharius II orders the bishops or the nobility who are possessed
of estates in distant parts, to choose upon the very spot those who are
to administer justice, or to receive the judiciary emoluments.
[170]
The same prince regulates the judiciary power between the
ecclesiastic courts and his officers.
[171]
The Capitulary of Charlemagne
in the year 802 prescribes to the bishops and abbots the qualifications
necessary for their officers of justice. Another capitulary of the same
prince inhibits the royal officers
[172]
to exercise any jurisdiction
over those who are employed in cultivating church lands, except they
entered into that state by fraud, and to exempt themselves from
contributing to the public charges.
[173]
The bishops assembled at Rheims
made a declaration that the vassals belonging to the respective churches
are within their im-munity.
[174]
The Capitulary of Charlemagne in the
year 806 ordains that the churches should have both criminal and civil
jurisdiction over those who live upon their lands.
[175]
In fine, as the
capitulary of Charles the Bald
[176]
distinguishes between the king's
jurisdiction, that of the lords, and that of the church, I shall say
nothing further upon this subject.
