The nature of these councils of Toledo being thus clearly determined, it remains for us to inquire what influence they exerted in the government. What were they as guarantees of the public liberties, and of the execution of the laws?
Before consulting special facts, the very nature of these assemblies may furnish us with some general indications with regard to their political influence. The clergy, taking a direct and active part in the government, were never in a natural and simple position. I do not speak either of the ecclesiastical law, or of the special mission of the clergy, or of the separation of the spiritual from the temporal order, which are questions still involved in obscurity. I examine facts alone. In fact, in the States of modern Europe, and at their origin, as well as in later times, the clergy did not govern, they neither commanded armies, nor administered justice, nor collected the taxes, nor held sway over the provinces. They penetrated to a greater or less distance, by more or less regular means, along the various paths of political life; but they never traversed them fully, freely, and thoroughly; politics never were their special and avowed career. In a word, the social powers, from the lowest to the highest degree, never were, either in law, or in fact, naturally lodged in their hands. When the bishops, therefore, in council assembled, interfered in the civil government, they were called to regulate affairs which did not concern them, and to occupy themselves about matters which did not constitute the habitual and recognised business of their position and life. This intervention, therefore, necessarily bore an equivocal and uncertain character. Great influence might have been attached thereto; but it could not possess any power of energetic and effectual resistance. If warrior chiefs meet together in assembly around their monarch, they can rely on their comrades and their soldiers to support their resolutions; if elected deputies assemble to vote taxes and ratify the laws of the country, they are sustained by the number, credit, and opinion of those who chose and deputed them.
Position Of The Visigothic Bishops.
If bodies charged with the administration of justice are, at the same time, called to deliberate upon certain acts of the sovereign, they may, by suspending the exercise of their functions, place the government in an almost untenable position. In these various combinations, a positive force, more or less regular in its character, stands at the back of the men appointed to control the supreme power. On the part of the clergy, any decisive resistance, in political matters, is almost impracticable, for not one of the effective forces of society is naturally at their disposal; and, in order to gain possession of such a force, they must abandon their position, abjure their character, and thus compromise the moral force whence they derive their true point of support. Thus, by the nature of things, the clergy are but ill-adapted to be constituted into a political power, with the mission of exercising control, and offering resistance. If they desire to remain within the limits of their position, they find themselves, at the decisive moment, unprovided with effective and trusty weapons. If they seek after such weapons, they throw the whole of society into disturbance, and incur the legitimate reproach of usurpation. Modern history, at every step, demonstrates this two-fold truth. When the clergy have believed themselves strong enough to resist in the same way as civil powers would have done, they have compromised themselves as clergy, and have increased disorder rather than obtained reform. When they have not made such attempts, their resistance has almost invariably been ineffectual at the moment when it was most necessary; and as, in such cases, ecclesiastics generally feel conscious of their weakness, they have not opposed any solid barrier to the encroachments of power; and, when they have not consented to be the instruments of its will, they have yielded after an impotent admonition.
Such was the position of the Visigothic bishops. They had not yet acquired, in temporal matters, sufficient force to struggle openly against the crown. They felt that a great part of their importance was due to their close alliance with the royal power, and that they would be great losers by breaking off the connection. They could not, therefore, carry their resistance very far, or establish in reality an independent political assembly. They went as far as to sanction the royal power, and to associate themselves with it by becoming its advisers; but they attempted nothing beyond.
Influence Of The Councils Of Toledo.
Facts prove this. These councils of Toledo, whither usurpers came to be elected, and which gave an entire code to the Visigoths, exercised in fact, over the great events of this period in Spain, less influence than was exerted in France by the Champs de Mars and de Mai. They occupied, but did not supply, the place of the old Germanic assemblies, for they did not possess their brute force, and were not in a position to substitute for it any sufficient regular force. Spain was indebted to them for a much better legislation than that possessed by other Barbarian nations, and probably also, in their daily practice, for a more enlightened and humane administration of justice; but in vain do we seek to find therein the principle of a great institution of liberty, and the characteristics of a veritable resistance of absolute power. During the period which now occupies our attention, the reigning power in the other States founded by the Barbarians was force—disorderly, capricious, and unsettled force, sometimes distributed amongst a multitude of almost independent chieftains; sometimes concentrated, for a brief space, and according to circumstances, in the hands of one man, or of a brutal and transitory aristocracy. No principle was acknowledged; no right was legal; all was matter of fact, liberty as well as power; and the germs of free institutions existed in the disorderly relations of these independent or ill-united forces, although, to speak the truth, liberty was nowhere visible. In Spain, and through the influence of the clergy, the government undoubtedly assumed greater generality and a more regular form; the laws afforded greater protection to the weak; the administration paid more attention to their condition; and there was less disorder and violence in society at large. Broader and more elevated moral ideas frequently governed the exercise of power. But, on the other hand, power was constituted under a more absolute form; Roman maxims prevailed over Germanic traditions; theocratic doctrines lent their aid to the arbitrary power of the Barbarians. The councils of Toledo modified and enlightened despotism, but did not limit the exercise of power.