Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/60

 46 /. BEFORE THE NORMAN CONQUEST to grasp the highly complex notion of a corporation.* No doubt, the individual mass priest of Prankish times lived under his folk-law ; but the great foundations of regular clergy, which sprang up so thickly under the fostering care of the orthodox Franks, could find little in the Leges Bar- barorum to meet their case. As time went on, however, new influences manifested them- selves. The disappearance of the Emperors from Rome, the schism between Eastern and Western Christianity, left the Popes in a commanding position with regard to the Western Church. They stepped into the place of the Roman Emperor, and issued Decretals which the clergy considered as binding in ecclesiastical matters. From the earliest times, also, Gen- eral Councils of the Church had met, and had legislated on matters of faith and discipline. Towards the end of the fifth century, a collection of these decrees and resolutions was made by Dionysius Exiguus, and was regarded as of great author- ity in Church matters. Neither did the Church disdain the help of the secular arm, especially in such delicate matters as tithes and patronage, in which the lay mind might require the use of carnal weapons. The alliance between the earlier Karolingians and the Papal See is marked by the appear- ance of ecclesiastical Capitula, many of them founded on Con- ciliar resolutions, in which, although the Frank Emperor maintains the royal claims, the Church gets it pretty much her own way.^ Similar documents are found amongst the Anglo-Saxon laws ; ^ and even the Scandinavian codes have their kirkiubolkcer, or Church Books.^ But ecclesiastical leg- islation becomes more and more independent as time goes on. A great stimulus is given by the work of the forger who calls himself Isidorus Mercator, which appears in the ninth century ; and which incorporates with the work of Dionysius Exiguus some sixty so-called Decretals of more than doubt- and Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law, vol. i. pp. 469-495. (ad Salz), of 813 (e Canonibus excerpta), all in Boretius, vol. 1. (M. G., 4to) pp. 105, 119, 173. in Schmid, op. cit., pp. 184 and 250.
 * On this interesting point, see Gierke, Deutsches Genossenschaftsrecht,
 * Cf . the Capitularies of 802 (a sacerdotibus proposUn), of 803-4
 * Cf. Edgar's Ecclesiastical Laws and Knut's Ecclesiastical Laws,
 * Cf. Westgotalagen, ed. Beauchet, pp. 131, sqq.