No one could become a member of the secular clergy without the permission of the king. Anyone who desired the clerical office must also give certain guarantees of his moral fitness. His conduct must be upright and pure, and he must possess a certain amount of education. To have married a second time, or to have married a widow, debarred a man from the clerical office, and those who were married must break off all relations with their wives. Clerics were distinguished from laymen by their tonsure, they wore a special costume, the habitus clericalis, and they were judged according to the Roman Law. Each cleric was attached to a special church, which he ought not to leave without the written permission of his bishop; the councils impose the severest penalties upon priests wandering at large (gyrovagi).
The chief of the clergy was the bishop, who was placed over a diocese — parochia, as it was called in the Merovingian period. Theoretically there were as many bishops as there had been civitates in Roman Gaul, but the principle was not rigorously carried out. A number of the small cities mentioned in the Notitia Galliarum had no bishop in the Merovingian period, for their territory was united to that of a neighbouring city. This was the case in regard to the civitas Rigomagensium (Thorame) and the civitas Salinensium (Castellane) in the province of the Alpes Maritimae. On the other hand some of the cities were divided up. St Remigius established a bishopric at Laon which was not a Gallo-Roman city. Similarly a bishopric was created at Nevers. Out of the civitas of Nîmes were carved the bishoprics of Uzès, Agde, and Maguelonne; out of Narbonne that of Carcassonne; out of Nyons that of Belley. This creation of new bishoprics was due to the progressof Christianity. Certain bishoprics which the Merovingian kings created in order to make the boundaries of the dioceses coincide with those of their share of the kingdom — such as that of Melun, formed out of that of Sens, and of Chateaudun, formed out of that of Chartres — had only a transient existence.
Theoretically the bishops were elected by the clergy and people of the city. The election took place in the cathedral, under the presidency of the metropolitan or of a bishop of the province; the faithful acclaimed the candidate of their choice, who immediately took possession of the episcopal chair. But under the Merovingians it is observable that the kings acquire little by little an influence in the elections. The sovereign made known his choice to the electors; in many cases he directly designated the prelate. He might, of course, choose the man most worthy of the post, but usually he was content to be bribed. "At this time," says Gregory of Tours, "that seed of iniquity began to bear fruit that the episcopal office was sold by the kings or bought by the clerics." In face of these pretentions of the monarchy the first councils of the Merovingian period, those of 533 and 538, did not fail to assert the ancient canonical rights. Before long however the bishops saw that they
