Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/65

were peculiarly remarkable for their proficiency in the study of the law. . . . The judges therefore were usually created out of the sacred order, as was likewise the case among the Normans; and all the inferior offices were supplied by the lower clergy, which has occasioned their successors to be denominated clerks to this day."

But with the growth of papal power a change began. As writes the author just quoted, Stephen—

"It soon became an established maxim in the papal system of policy, that all ecclesiastical persons, and all ecclesiastical causes, should be solely and entirely subject to ecclesiastical jurisdiction only."

After the conquest, when shoals of foreign clergy came over, and when they and the pre-existing monastic clergy were bribed by endowments to support the Conqueror, the papal policy prevailed so far as to separate the ecclesiastical court from the civil court; after which "the Saxon laws were soon overborne by the Norman justiciaries." In subsequent reigns, according to Hallam—

"the clergy combined its study [i. e., the Roman law] with that of their own canons; it was a maxim that every canonist must be a civilian, and that no one could be a good civilian unless he were also a canonist."

Along with acceptance of the doctrine that the Christian high priest, the pope, was an oracle through whom God spoke, there was established in Christendom a theory of law like that held by ancient peoples: laws were divine dicta and priests divinely authorized interpreters of them. Under these circumstances the ecclesiastical courts extended their jurisdiction to secular causes; until, gradually, the secular courts were almost deprived of power: the removal of criminal clerics from secular jurisdiction and the penalty of excommunication on those who in any serious way opposed the clerical power, being of course efficient weapons. The condition of things then existing is well shown by the following statement of Prof. Maitland:—

"If we look back to Richard I.'s reign we may see, as the highest temporal court of the realm, a court chiefly composed of ecclesiastics, presided over by an archbishop, who is also Chief Justiciar; he will have at his side two or three bishops, two or three archdeacons, and but two or three laymen. The greatest judges even of Henry III.'s reign are ecclesiastics, though by this time it has become scandalous for a bishop to do much secular justice."

Not only were priests the judges and the interpreters of law, but they at one time discharged subordinate legal functions. In Germany, according to Stolzel, the notarial profession was in the hands of ecclesiastics. France, during the 13th century, furnished like evidence. Clerics played the parts of procureurs or attorneys, according to Fournier, who says:—

"lés ecclésiastiques ne pouvait, en principe, accepter ces fonctions que pour réprésenter les pauvres, les églises, ou dans les causes spirituelles."