28. Later Carolingian Efforts to Preserve Order
The ninth century is chiefly significant in Frankish history as an era of decline of monarchy and increase of the powers and independence of local officials and magnates. Already by Charlemagne's death, in 814, the disruptive forces were at work, and under the relatively weak successors of the great Emperor the course of decentralization went on until by the death of Charles the Bald, in 877, the royal authority had been reduced to a condition of insignificance. This century was the formative period par excellence of the feudal system—a type of social and economic organization which the conditions of the time rendered inevitable and under which great monarchies tended to be dissolved into a multitude of petty local states. Large landholders began to regard themselves as practically independent; royal officials, particularly the counts, refused to be parted from their positions and used them primarily to enhance their own personal authority; the churches and monasteries stretched their royal grants of immunity so far as almost to refuse to acknowledge any obligations to the central government. In these and other ways the Carolingian monarchy was shorn of its powers, and as it was quite lacking in money, lands, and soldiers who could be depended on, there was little left for it to do but to legislate and ordain without much prospect of being able to enforce its laws and ordinances. The rapidity with which the kings of the period were losing their grip on the situation comes out very clearly from a study of the capitularies which they issued from time to time. In general these capitularies, especially after about 840, testify to the disorder everywhere prevailing, the usurpations of the royal officials, and the popular contempt of the royal authority, and reiterate commands for the preservation of order until they become fairly wearisome to the reader. Royalty was at a bad pass and its weakness is reflected unmistakably in its attempts to govern by mere edict without any backing of enforcing power. In 843, 853, 856, 857, and many other years of Charles the Bald's reign, elaborate decrees were issued prohibiting brigandage and lawlessness, but with the tell-tale provision that violators were to be "admonished with Christian love to repent," or that they were to be punished "as far as the local officials could remember them," or that the royal agents were themselves to take oath not to become highway robbers! Sometimes the king openly confessed his weakness and proceeded to implore, rather than to command, his subjects to obey him.
The capitulary quoted below belongs to the last year of the short reign of Carloman (882-884), son of Louis the Stammerer and grandson of Charles the Bald. It makes a considerable show of power, ordaining the punishment of criminals as confidently as if there had really been means to assure its enforcement. But in truth all the provisions in it had been embodied in capitularies of Carloman's predecessors with scarcely perceptible effect, and there was certainly no reason to expect better results now. With the nobles practicing, if not asserting, independence, the churches and monasteries heeding the royal authority hardly at all, the country being ravaged by Northmen and the people turning to the great magnates for the protection they could no longer get from the king, and the counts and missi dominici making their lands and offices the basis for hereditary local authority, the king had come to be almost powerless in the great realm where less than a hundred years before Charlemagne's word, for all practical purposes, was law. Even Charlemagne himself, however, could have done little to avert the state of anarchy which conditions too strong for any sovereign to cope with had brought about.
Source—Text in Monumenta Germaniæ Historica, Leges (Boretius ed.), Vol. II., pp. 371-375.
1. According to the custom of our predecessors, we desire that in our palace shall prevail the worship of God, the honor of The keeping of the peace enjoined the king, piety, concord, and a condition of peace; and that that peace established in our palace by the sanction of our predecessors shall extend to, and be observed throughout, our entire kingdom.
2. We desire that all those who live at our court, and all who come there, shall live peaceably. If any one, in breach of the peace, is guilty of violence, let him be brought to a hearing at our palace, by the authority of the king and by the order of our missus, as it was ordained by the capitularies of our predecessors, that he may be punished according to a legal judgment and may pay a triple composition with the royal ban.[240]
3. If the offender has no lord, or if he flees from our court, our missus shall go to find him and shall order him, in our name, to appear at the palace.[241] If he should be so rash as to disdain to come, let him be brought by force. If he spurns both us and our missus, and while refusing to obey summons is killed in resisting, and any of his relatives or friends undertake to exercise against our agents who have killed him the right of vengeance,[242] we will oppose them there and will give our agents all the aid of our royal authority.
5. The bishop of the diocese in which the crime shall have been committed ought, through the priest of the place, to give three successive invitations to the offender to repent and to The bishop's part in repressing crime make reparation for his fault in order to set himself right with God and the church that he has injured. If he scorns and rejects this summons and invitation, let the bishop wield upon him the pastoral rod, that is to say, the sentence of excommunication; and let him separate him from the communion of the Holy Church until he shall have given the satisfaction that is required.
9. In order that violence be entirely brought to an end and order restored, it is necessary that the bishop's authority should Obligations of lay officials to restrain violence be supplemented by that of the public officials. Therefore we and our faithful have judged it expedient that the missi dominici should discharge faithfully the duties of their office.[243] The count shall enjoin to the viscount,[244] to his vicarii and centenarii,[245] and to all the public officials, as well as to all Franks who have a knowledge of the law, that all should give as much aid as they can to the Church, both on their own account and in accord with the requests of the clergy, every time they shall be called upon by the bishop, the officers of the bishop, or even by the needy. They should do this for the love of God, the peace of the Holy Church, and the fidelity that they owe to us.