Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/205

 GREGORY THE GREAT 169 need of correction, and systematized the church organiza- tion. In 747 Boniface secured from the Frankish bishops a declaration of their fidelity to Rome. In 752 he anointed Pepin, son of Charles M artel, king of the Franks in name as well as in fact; but that event must await explanation until a later chapter. The next year the aged Boniface returned to his first love in the field of foreign missions, Frisia, and in 754 was slain there by the savage heathen natives. To the Irish Church, and especially to Columban, was perhaps due the introduction of the Penitentials, or books listing sins with the punishment or penance for „. ., . , , • 1 11 • *> i Penitentials each which the priest shall require from the sinner. Such books of penance existed among the British, Irish, and Anglo-Saxons, and thence spread through the Western Church. This specific prescription of acts of pen- ance for their sins to rude barbarians in a brutal age by holy [priests, whom they would fear to disobey, has been gener- ally regarded as a beneficial education for them in the essen- tials of morals and decency at a time when the State was weak and found it hard to keep order and punish crimes. For a century or more after Gregory the Great we find in the four chief divisions of western Europe four Germanic Ipeoples: the Visigoths in Spain, the Franks in L om b ar( j s Gaul, the Lombards in Italy, and the Anglo- and Anglo- Saxons in the British Isles. The last two peoples, jhowever, had succeeded in conquering only parts of the territories mentioned. And neither of the last two united their conquests at this time into a strong single state. There was but one Lombard king, it is true, but he often had to fight with the Duke of Spoleto or the Duke of Benevento. The little Anglo-Saxon kingdoms kept struggling among themselves for supremacy, and now Kent, now Northum- bria, now Mercia had its brief moment of triumph. The Lombards and Anglo-Saxons had once lived close together and there are close resemblances in their laws. At first self- respecting and prosperous freemen were in the majority among both these peoples, but after they had settled on