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 Villis104 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 Lombards108 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 Debonnaire109 and that of the Emperor Lotharius, his son, would not allow.110



　　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.111 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.



　　13. Of the Election of Bishops and Abbots. As the church had grown poor, the kings resigned the right of nominating to bishoprics and other ecclesiastic benefices.112 The princes gave themselves less trouble about the ecclesiastic ministers; and the candidates were less solicitous in applying to their authorities. Thus the church received a kind of compensation for the possessions she had lost.



　　Hence, if Louis the Debonnaire left the people of Rome in possession of the right of choosing their popes, it was owing to the general spirit that prevailed in his time;113 he behaved in the same manner to the see of Rome as to other bishoprics.

关键字:英文版论法的精神

生词表: