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 lOO THE ANCESTOR entitled De Nuptiis Gentilium^ which forbids any Roman or provincial woman to marry a gentiliSy and any provincial to take a wife of that kind, that is to say uxor Barbara. The word is used in the same sense in the code of Theodosius, and in the later codes generally it denotes, when religion is con- cerned, a pagan, and in laws relating to civil government all who are not Roman citizens. Isidore and S. Augustine use it in the former sense, and, in curious contradiction to the modern idea of a Christian gentleman, explain that gentilis ilk est qui in Christum non credit. Selden imagines^ that the name of gentiles y applied by the degenerate Romans to their conquerors, was afterwards adopted by the latter as a title of honour, to dis- tinguish the free tribesman from the serfs who paid him tribute and tallage. The French writer, Pasquier, to whom he refers the reader for evidence, puts forward a still more ingenious hypothesis. He quotes Les Recbercbes de la France^ 1607, 200) the passage in Ammianus Marcellinus, describing how after the capture of Cologne the Emperor Julian wintered at Sens, where in the absence of his scutarii and gentiles he was almost overwhelmed by a horde of enemies. What could scutarii and gentiles mean } Obviously there was only one explanation. They were esquires and gentlemen ; and Pas- quier goes on to surmise that they may have received grants of land in Gaul as a reward for their services and have founded the order of gentilbommes. To the modern mind this is not convincing. In the Saxon vocabularies gentilis is simply a Gentile, and the word in its other meaning may well have been introduced into France, England and Spain in the twelfth cen- tury from Italy, where it had apparently continued to be used, though very rarely, in its Ciceronian sense. Its first appearance in medieval literature, as expressing a man of good birth, is, I believe, in Wace's estimate of the character of Richard the Good, who succeeded to the dukedom of Normandy in 996. The duke, he tells us, surprised his people by the magnificence of his court, and would have none, even in the smallest offices of his household, hut gentils^ to whom there was livery of rations every day and of cloth at the four great feasts of the year : — Tant i mist h tant i duna, Tuit li pople s' esmerveilla. Ne volt mestier de sa meisun Duner se a gentiz hons nun. ^ This was M. Velser's theory. See Rerum Jug. Finite/. (1593), p. 163, liber viii.