[289] The mancus was a Saxon money value equivalent to a mark.
[290] A minster was a church attached to a monastery.
[291] The witan was the gathering of "wisemen"—members of the royal family, high officials in the Church, and leading nobles—about the Anglo-Saxon king to assist in making ordinances and supervising the affairs of state.
[292] Compensation rendered to an injured person.
[293] The principal difference between Arian and orthodox Christians arose out of the much discussed problem as to whether Jesus was of the same substance as God and co-eternal with Him. The Arians maintained that while Jesus was truly the Son of God, He must necessarily have been inferior to the Father, else there would be two gods. Arianism was formally condemned by the Council of Nicaea in 325, but it continued to be the prevalent belief in many parts of the Roman Empire; and when the Germans became Christians, it was Christianity of the Arian type (except in the case of the Franks) that they adopted—because it happened to be this creed that the missionaries carried to them. The Franks became orthodox Christians, which in part explains their close relations with the papacy in the earlier Middle Ages [see [p. 50]]. Of course Gregory of Tours, who relates the story of the Arian presbyter, as a Frank, was a hater of Arianism, and therefore we need not be surprised at the expressions of contempt which he employs in referring to "the heretic."
[294] The story as told by Raimond of Agiles was that Peter Bartholomew had been visited by Andrew the Apostle, who had revealed to him the spot where the lance lay buried beneath the Church of St. Peter in Antioch.
[295] Albar, or Albara, was a town southeast of Antioch, beyond the Orontes.
[296] Owing to Peter's early death after undergoing the ordeal, a serious controversy arose as to whether he had really passed through it without injury from the fire. His friends ascribed his death to the wounds he had received from the enthusiastic crowd, but his enemies declared that he died from burns.
[297] Charles Seignobos, The Feudal Régime (translated in "Historical Miscellany" series), New York, 1904, p. 1.
[298] A man was not supposed in any way to sacrifice his freedom by becoming a vassal and the lord's right to his service would be forfeited if this principle were violated.