all temporal affairs, the Theodosian Code was the
universal law of the clergy; but the Barbaric jurisprudence had
liberally provided for their personal safety; a sub-deacon was
equivalent to two Franks; the _antrustion_, and priest, were held in
similar estimation: and the life of a bishop was appreciated far above
the common standard, at the price of nine hundred pieces of gold.
The Romans communicated to their conquerors the use of the Christian
religion and Latin language; but their language and their religion had
alike degenerated from the simple purity of the Augustan, and Apostolic
age. The progress of superstition and Barbarism was rapid and universal:
the worship of the saints concealed from vulgar eyes the God of
the Christians; and the rustic dialect of peasants and soldiers was
corrupted by a Teutonic idiom and pronunciation. Yet such intercourse
of sacred and social communion eradicated the distinctions of birth and
victory; and the nations of Gaul were gradually confounded under the
name and government of the Franks.

The Franks, after they mingled with their Gallic subjects, might have
imparted the most valuable of human gifts, a spirit and system of
constitutional liberty. Under a king, hereditary, but limited, the
chiefs and counsellors might have debated at Paris, in the palace of the
Caesars: the adjacent field, where the emperors reviewed their mercenary
legions, would have admitted the legislative assembly of freemen and
warriors; and the rude model, which had been sketched in the woods of
Germany, might have been polished and improved by the civil wisdom
of the Romans. But the careless Barbarians, secure of their personal
independence, disdained the labor of government: the annual assemblies
of the month of March were silently abolished; and the nation was
separated, and almost dissolved, by the conquest of Gaul. The monarchy
was left without any regular establishment of justice, of arms, or
of revenue. The successors of Clovis wanted resolution to assume, or
strength to exercise, the legislative and executive powers, which the
people had abdicated: the royal prerogative was distinguished only by a
more ample privilege of rapine and murder; and the love of freedom, so
often invigorated and disgraced by private ambition, was reduced, among
the licentious Franks, to the contempt of order, and the desire of
impunity. Seventy-five years after the death of Clovis, his grandson,
Gontran, king of Burgundy