Page:History of the Franks.djvu/31

INTRODUCTION xxv king Sigibert and the Huns/ in which the Huns by the use of magic arts caused various false appearances to arise before their enemies and overcame them decisively. " It is very plain that one exceedingly important function of the leader of a sixth-century army was to keep in the right relation with the supernatural powers. Clovis is repre- sented as heeding this necessity more than any other Prankish king.^ It is clear that in the sixth-century state of mind in Gaul nothing was purely secular. As far as possible all secular elements had been expelled. Men did not meet the objective realities of society and of nature as they were ; there was a superstitious interpretation for everything. The hope in such a condition of things lay only in un- conscious developments which might break through the closed system of thought before the latter reaHzed that it was on the defensive. The most promising element in the situation was the Frankish state. Apparently the Frankish kingship was not to any large extent a magico-reUgious institution, but simply a recent develop- ment arising out of the conquest. As an institution it was not grounded in the superstitious past, and the cold hostihty of the bishops kept it from the development usual in a benighted society. To this chance we may perhaps attribute a momentous result ; in it lay the possibihty and promise of a secular state. In the case of King Chilperic we apparently have a premature development in this direction. We must read between the lines when Gregory speaks of him. Gregory calls him "the Nero and Herod of our time," and loads him with abuse. He ridicules his poems, and according to his own story overwhelms him with an avalanche of contempt when he ventures to state some new opinions on the Trinity. The significant thing about Chilperic was this, that he had at this time the independence of mind to make such a criticism, as well as the hard temper necessary to fight the bishops successfully. "In his reign," Gregory tells us, "very few of the clergy reached the office of bishop." Chilperic used often to say : " Behold our treasury has remained poor, our wealth has been trans- ferred to the churches ; there is no king but the bishops ; my office has perished and passed over to the bishops of the cities." ^ Chil- peric was thus the forerunner of the secular state in France. E. B. » H. F., IV, 29. « pp. 36-38, 40, 45. 53-54- ' See p. 166.