The civil and ecclesiastical relations of the middle ages are so closely intertwined that it is
impossible to study or understand the one without the other. In Spain, for instance, the synods of
Toledo were both ecclesiastical councils and royal parliaments; after the affairs of the church were
disposed of, the bishops and nobles met together for the enactment of civil laws, which were
sanctioned by the king. The synods and diets held under Charlemagne had likewise a double
character. In England the bishops were, and are still, members of the House of Lords, and often
occupied seats in the cabinet down to the time of Cardinal Wolsey, who was Archbishop of York
and Chancellor of England. The religious persecutions of the middle ages were the joint work of
church and state.
This union has a bright and a dark side. It was a wholesome training-school for barbarous
races, it humanized and ennobled the state; but it secularized the church and the clergy, and hindered
the development of freedom by repressing all efforts to emancipate the mind from the yoke of
despotic power. The church gained a victory over the world, but the world gained also a victory
over the church. St. Jerome, who witnessed the first effects of the marriage of the church with the
Roman empire, anticipated the experience of later ages, when he said: "The church by its connection
with Christian princes gained in power and riches, but lost in virtues."^411 Dante, who lived in the
golden age of the mediaeval hierarchy, and believed the fable of the donation of Constantine to
Sylvester, traced the ills of the church to "that marriage-dower" which the first wealthy pope received
from the first Christian emperor.
The connection of the ecclesiastical and civil powers is embodied in the legislation which
regulates the conduct of man in his relations to his fellow-men, and secures social order and national
welfare. It is an index of public morals as far as it presupposes and fixes existing customs; and
where it is in advance of popular sentiment, it expresses a moral ideal in the mind of the lawgivers
to be realized by the educational power of legal enactments.
During the middle ages there were three systems of jurisprudence: the Roman law, the
Barbaric law, and the Canon law. The first two proceeded from civil, the third from ecclesiastical
authority. The civil law embodies the records and edicts of emperors and kings, the enactments of
diets and parliaments, the decisions of courts and judges. The ecclesiastical law embodies the canons
of councils and decretals of popes. The former is heathen in origin, but improved and modified by
Christianity; the latter is the direct production of the church, yet as influenced by the state of
mediaeval society. Both rest on the union of church and state, and mutually support each other, but
it was difficult to draw the precise line of difference, and to prevent occasional collisions of
jurisdiction.
§ 89. The Roman Law.
See vol. III. §§ 13 and 18, pp. 90 sqq. And 107 sqq.
Fr. K. von Savigny (Prof. of jurisprudence in Berlin, d. 1861) Geschichte des römischen Rechts
im Mittelalter. Berlin 1815–’31 6 vols. Chapter 44 of Gibbon on Roman law. Ozanam: Hist.
of the Civilization in the Fifth Century, ch. V. (vol. I. 136–158 in Glyn’s transl. Lond. 1868).
Milman: Lat. Christ. Bk III. ch.5 (vol. 1. 479 sqq. N. York ed.)
(^411) "Ecclesia postquam ad Christianos principes venit, potentia quidem et divitiis, major, sed virtutibus minor facta."