OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
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from the influence of his liberality. But this dependent tenure was gradually abolished[1] by the independent and rapacious nobles of France, who established the perpetual property, and hereditary succession, of their benefices: a revolution salutary to the earth, which had been injured, or neglected, by its precarious masters.[2] Besides these royal and beneficiary estates, a large proportion had been assigned, in the division of Gaul, of allodial and Salic lands; they were exempt from tribute, and the Salic lands were equally shared among the male descendants of the Franks.[3]
Private usurpations In the bloody discord and silent decay of the Merovingian line, a new order of tyrants arose in the provinces, who, under the appellation of Seniors, or Lords, usurped a right to govern, and a licence to oppress, the subjects of their peculiar territory. Their ambition might be checked by the hostile resistance of an equal: but the laws were extinguished; and the sacrilegious Barbarians, who dared to provoke the vengeance of a saint or bishop,[4] would seldom respect the landmarks of a profane and defenceless neighbour. The common, or public, rights of nature, such as they had always been deemed by the Roman jurisprudence,[5] were severely restrained by the German conquerors, whose amusement, or rather passion, was the exercise of hunting. The vague dominion which Man has assumed over the wild inhabitants of the earth, the air, and the waters, was confined to some fortunate individuals of the human species. Gaul was again overspread with woods; and the animals, who were reserved for the use, or pleasure, of the lord, might ravage, with impunity, the fields of his industrious vassals. The chase was the sacred privilege of the nobles, and their domestic servants.- ↑ From a passage of the Burgundian law (tit. i. No. 4, in tom. iv. p. 257) it is evident that a deserving son might expect to hold the lands which his father had received from the royal bounty of Gundobald. The Burgundians would firmly maintain their privilege, and their example might encourage the beneficiaries of France.
- ↑ The revolutions of the benefices and fiefs are clearly fixed by the Abbé de Mably. His accurate distinction of times gives him a merit to which even Montesquieu is a stranger.
- ↑ See the Salic law (tit. lxii. in tom. iv. p. 156). The origin and nature of these Salic lands, which in times of ignorance were perfectly understood, now perplex our most learned and sagacious critics.
- ↑ Many of the two hundred and six miracles of St. Martin (Greg. Turon. in Maximâ Bibliothecâ Patrum, tom. xi. p. 896-932) were repeatedly performed to punish sacrilege. Audite hæc omnes (exclaims the bishop of Tours) potestatem habentes, after relating, how some horses run mad that had been turned into a sacred meadow.
- ↑ Heinec. Element. Jur. German. l. ii. p. 1, No. 8.
