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150 master, and a freedman of this kind, known as libertus or lidus, remained in a position of close dependence upon his former master. He could, it is true, plead in the courts and enter into binding agreements, but he paid his patron a yearly fee known as the lidimonium, and if he died without issue his patron became his heir. The freedman usually retained the land which he had cultivated as a slave, but instead of being a servilis holding it became a lidilis holding.

On the large estates there was a third class of holding, the mansi ingenuiles. These were held by the coloni, the descendants of the former Roman coloni. Theoretically these coloni were free, but they were bound to their holdings; they could not quit them without the permission of the owner, and if they ran away they were brought back by force. But, on the other hand, so long as they paid their rent, they could not be expelled from their holdings and might cultivate them as they chose. They thus form an intermediate class between the slaves who were tied to one place and the freemen, to whom all roads stood open.

The freemen might belong either to the conquering race, the Franks, or the conquered race, the Gallo-Romans; and the two races were under different laws. The Salic law fixes the wergeld of a Salian Frank at two hundred solidi, that of the Roman at one hundred only. But we must not conclude from this that there was a great gulf fixed between the two races. Where both parties to a case were Gallo-Romans, they were judged according to the Roman law; when a Gallo-Roman was accused by a Frank, judgment was still given according to the Roman law; it was only in a case where a Frank was the defendant that the Salic law was applied, and it is quite natural that this law should be more severe upon the murder of a man of the same race than on that of a Roman. Besides, the further we advance in Merovingian history, the more the two races become intermingled. The Franks admired the Roman civilisation and endeavoured to assimilate it; they learned the common language of Gaul, which was in process of becoming Romanic; they even prided themselves on learning to speak pure Latin. The Gallo-Romans, on their part, v adop ted the military customs of the barbarians. They frequently gave Germanic names to their children. Both nations were Christian, and the common faith contributed to bring them together.

In theory all these freemen were equal, but little by little distinctions arose among them. In default of a nobility with hereditary privileges, there grew up an aristocracy, potentes, priores, who exercised a powerful influence. These great men belonged generally to the ancient Gallo-Roman senatorial families, who held vast estates and possessed great wealth. From these families the king chose the great officers of state and the people of the cities chose their bishops; thus there was added to their wealth political power, or the veneration attaching to