in feudalism. Monasteries and bishoprics were as feudal fiefs: abbots as well as bishops commonly held lands from an over-lord, and were themselves lords of their sub-vassals who held lands from them. To the former they owed rent, or aid, or service; to the latter they owed protection. In either case they might have to go or send their men to war. They also managed and guarded their own lands, like feudal nobles, vi et armis. When the estates of a monastery, for example, lay in different places, the abbot might exercise authority over them through a local potentate, and might also have such a protector (vîdame, avoué, advocatus) for the home abbey. There was always a general feeling, often embodied in law or custom, that a Church dignitary should fight by another's sword and spear. But this did not prevent bishop and abbot in countless instances in France, England, Germany, and Spain, from riding mail-clad under their seignorial banner at the head of their forces.[1]
Episcopal lands and offices were not inherited:[2] yet with rare exceptions the bishops came from the noble, fighting, hunting class. They were noblemen first and ecclesiastics afterwards. The same was true of the abbots. Noble-born, they became dignitaries of the world through investiture with the broad lands of the monastery, and then administrators by reason of the temporal functions involved. As with the episcopal or monastic heads, so with canons and monks. They, too, for the most part were well-born. They also were good, bad, or indifferent, warlike or clerkly, devoted to study, abandoned to pleasure, or following the one and the other sparingly. Many a holy meditative monk there was; and many a saintly parish priest, the stay of piety and justice in his village. The rude times, the ceaseless murder and harrying, uncertainty and danger everywhere, seemed to beget such holy lives.
- ↑ Many bishops and abbots held definite secular rank; the Archbishop of Rheims was a duke, and so was the Bishop of Langres and Laon; while the bishops of Beauvais and Noyon were counts. In Germany, the archiepiscopal dukes of Cologne and Mainz were among the chief princes of the land.
- ↑ There were, however, some (naturally shocking) instances of inheritance, as where the Bishop of Nantes in 1049 admitted that he had been invested with the bishopric during the lifetime of his father, the preceding bishop. See Luchaire, in vol. ii. (2), pp. 107-117 of Lavisse's Hist. de France, for this and other examples of episcopal feudalism.
