26 /. BEFORE THE NORMAN CONQUEST ^ and Becket has a long Frankish prologue.* Some conces- sions had been won from the Merovingians ; but still Charles the Great had been supreme over all persons and in all causes. Though his realm fell asunder, the churches were united, and united by a principle that claimed a divine origin. They were rapidly evolving law which was in course of time to be the written law of an universal and theocratic monarchy. The mass, now swollen by the Isidorian forgeries, still rolled from diocese to diocese, taking up new matter into itelf. It became always more lawyerly in form and texture as it appropriated sentences from the Roman law-books and made itself the law of the only courts to which the clergy would yield obedience. Nor was it above borrowing from Germanic law, for thence it took its probative processes, the oath with oath-helpers and the ordeal or judgment of God. Among the many compilers of manuals of church law three are espe- cially famous: Regino, abbot of Priim (906-915);^ Burch- ard, bishop of Worms (1012-1023) ,^ and Ivo, bishop of Chartres (ob. 1117).'* They and many others prepared the way for Gratian, the maker of the church's Digest, and events were deciding that the church should also have a Code and abundant Novels. In an evil day for themselves the German kings took the papacy from the mire into which it had fallen, and soon the work of issuing decretals was resumed with new vigour. At the date of the Norman Con-
- quest the flow of these edicts was becoming rapid.
Historians of French and German law find that a well- marked period is thrust upon them. The age of the folk- laws and the capitularies, " the Frankish time," they can restore. Much indeed is dark and disputable; but much has been made plain during the last thirty years by their unwearying labour. There is no lack of materials, and the materials are of a strictly legal kind: laws and statements of law. This done, they are compelled rapidly to pass through several centuries to a new point of view. They
- Hinschius, op. cit. iv. 849 ff.
- Tardif, op. cit. 162. Printed in Migne, Patrol, vol. 132; also edited
by Wasserschleben, 1840.
- Ibid. 164. Printed in Migne, Patrol, vol. 140.
- Ibid. 170. Printed in Migne, Patrol, vol. 161.
