Permission to surrender to the Church.
The very first provision of the Alamannic laws was a direct permission to any freeman, without hindrance from 'Dux' or 'Comes,' to surrender his property and himself to the Church by charter executed before six or seven witnesses; and it provided further that if he should surrender his land, to receive the usufruct of it back again during life as a benefice charged with a certain tribute or census, his heir should not dispute the surrender.[473]
In the Bavarian laws of slightly later date there is a similar permission to any freeman, from his own share, after he has made division with his sons, to surrender to the Church villas, lands, slaves, or other property, to be received back as a beneficium in the same way,[474] and neither 'rex,' 'dux,' nor 'any other person' is to prevent it. [p318]
Who are the people thus permitted to surrender their possessions to the Church? Clearly they are the free possessores or tenants on the public lands, now become 'terra regis,' under the fiscal officers who are still called duces and comites.
Here, then, is still going on, but in the interest of the Church, precisely the process described by Salvian, and with precisely the same results.
Further, these results can be traced with remarkable exactness; for in the charters of St. Gall and Lorsch and Wizenburg there are numerous instances of surrenders made under this law.
Instances of surrender in the St. Gall charters.
In the 'Urkundenbuch' of the Abbey of St. Gall, under date A.D. 754,[475] there is a charter by which a possessor of land in certain 'villas' in the neighbourhood of St. Gall hands over to the monastery all that he possesses therein, with the cattle, slaves, houses, fields, woods, waters, &c., thereon, together with two servi and all their belongings; and (it proceeds) 'for these things I am willing to render service every year as follows:—viz. xxx. seglas of beer (cervesa), xl. loaves and a sound spring pig (frischenga), and xxx. mannas, and to plough 2 jugera[476] (jochos) per [p319] annum, and to gather and carry the produce to the yard, also to do post service (angaria) when required.'
Here we have not only the public tributum converted into a manorial census or 'gafol,' but also the sordida munera transformed into manorial services.
In another charter, A.D. 759, is a surrender of all a man's possessions in the place called Heidolviswilare, to the Abbey, 'in this wise that I may receive it back from you per precariam, and yearly I will pay thence census, i.e. xxx. siclas of beer, xl. loaves, a sound spring frisginga, 3 day-works (operæ) of one man in the course of the year; and my son Hacco, if he survive me, shall do so during his life.' [477]