THE CIVIL FUNCTIONS OF PEIESTS. 7S9 



present. Of the Coast Negroes we read that &quot; in Badagry 

 the fetish-priests are the sole judges of the people.&quot; In 

 ancient Yucatan &quot;the priests of the gods were so much 

 venerated that they were the lords who inflicted punish 

 ments and assigned rewards.&quot; Already in 525, when 

 speaking of judicial systems, I have referred to the judicial 

 functions of priests among the Gauls and Scandinavians. 

 With more ancient peoples the like relation held for the 

 like reason. Of the Egyptians we are told that 



&quot;Besides their religious duties, the priests fulfilled the important 

 offices of judges [yElian, Hist. Var., lib. xiv, c. 34] and legislators, 

 as well as counsellors of the monarch ; and the laws as among many 

 other nations of the East [the Jews, Moslems, and others], forming part 

 of the sacred books, could only be administered by members of their 

 order.&quot; 



Unlike as was originally the relation of the priest to 

 the ruler throughout Christendom, yet when the Christian 

 priest came eventually to be regarded, like the priests of 

 indigenous religions, as divinely inspired, there arose a 

 tendency to recognize his judicial authority. In the old 

 English period the bishop had &quot; to assist in the administra 

 tion of justice between man and man, to guard against per 

 jury, and to superintend the administration of the ordeals.&quot; 

 And this early participation with laymen in judicial 

 functions afterwards became something like usurpation. 

 Beginning as tribunals enforcing the discipline of superior 

 priests over inferior priests, ecclesiastical courts, both here 

 and abroad, extended their range of action to cases in which 

 clerical and lay persons were simultaneously implicated, and 

 eventually made the actions of laymen also, subject to their 

 decisions. At first taking cognizance of offences distin 

 guished as spiritual, these courts gradually extended the 

 definition of such until in some places 



&quot;All testamentary and matrimonial questions all matters relating 

 to bankers, usurers, Jews, Lombards everything involving contracts 

 and engagements upon oath all cases arising out of the Crusades the 

 management of hospitals and other charitable institutions all charges 



