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 Mcon,
[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
[107]
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
[108]
and that of the Emperor Lotharius, his son,
would not allow.
[109]
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.
[110]
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.
