31.14. 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
[113]
and Lotharius I
[114]
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.
[115]
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.
Footnotes
[113]
As appears by his Capitulary, in the year 801, art. 17, in
Baluzius, tome i, p. 360.
[114]
See his constitution, inserted in the code of the Lombards,
book iii, tit. 1, section 44.
[115]
See the above constitution, and the "Capitulary of Charles the
Bald," in the year 846, cap. xx. in Villa Sparnaco, Baluzius's edition, tome
ii. p. 31, and that of the year 853, cap. iii and v, in the "Synod of
Soissons," Baluzius's edition, tome ii, p. 54; and that of the year 854, apud
Attiniacum, cap. x. Baluzius's edition, tome ii, p. 70. See also the first
Capitulary of Charlemagne, incerti anni, art. 49 and 56. Baluzius's
edition, tome i, p. 519.
