502 POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 



under Christianity, the judges retained the name and several 

 of the functions of heathen goftar.&quot; And then we have the 

 illustration furnished by that rise of ecclesiastics to the posi 

 tions of judges throughout medieval Europe, which accom 

 panied belief in their divine authority. When, as during the 

 Merovingian period and after, &quot;the fear of hell, the desire of 

 winning heaven,&quot; and other motives, prompted donations and 

 bequests to the Church, till a large part of the landed pro 

 perty fell into its hands when there came increasing 

 numbers of clerical aud semi-clerical dependents of the 

 Church, over whom bishops exercised judgment and disci 

 pline when ecclesiastical influence so extended itself that, 

 while priests became exempt from the control of laymen, lay 

 authorities became subject to priests ; there was established 

 a judicial power of this divinely-commissioned class to which 

 even kings succumbed. So was it in England too. Before the 

 Conquest, bishops had become the assessors of ealdormen in 

 the scire-gemot, and gave judgments on various civil matters. 

 With that recrudescence of military organization which fol 

 lowed the Conquest, came a limitation of their jurisdiction 

 to spiritual offences and causes concerning clerics. But 

 in subsequent periods ecclesiastical tribunals, bringing under 

 canon law numerous ordinary transgressions, usurped more 

 and more the duties of secular judges: their excommuni 

 cations being enforced by the temporal magistrates. More 

 over, since prelates as feudal nobles were judges in their 

 respective domains ; and since many major and minor judicial 

 offices in the central government were filled by prelates; 

 it resulted that the administration of justice was largely, if 

 not mainly, in the hands of priests. 



This sharing of delegated judicial functions between the 

 military class and the priestly class, with predominance here 

 of the one and there of the other, naturally continued while 

 there was no other class having wealth and influence. Bub 

 with the increase of towns and the multiplication of traders, 

 who accumulated riches and acquired education, previously 



