TSR Wiki > Study Help > Subjects and Revision > Revision Notes > History > Growing political importance of the ecclesiastical authorities
Nelson
- Crucial importance of church lands - also a major resource. Generations of pious royal / aristocratic benefaction à lay reappropriation of church estates possible C8 in Gaul. (Trad. - 751 seen as “feudal revolution” - Martel seizing church lands to grant to vassals. No - this was nothing new).
- Martel actually ‘crushed the tyrants’ (Vita Karoli) - i.e. those bishops who were building up ecc principalities at Auxerre / Orléans. Less ‘reforming zeal’ than need to remove pol rivals in key locations.
- Pippin continued control of key churches (e.g. installed noble supporters on lands of see of Auxerre - these enabled him to take Burgundy in 750s). Extension into realm-wide incorporation of F church into the state; after all he had been appointed king by bishops of Gaul. Made major ecc appointments personally / summoned them to royal assemblies / required them to pay mil service.
- Huge importance - e.g. once Charlemagne had annexed Lombard Italy, endowments to St. Martin / Denis etc. secured route to Italy. Church policy deployed and built public authority.
- Kings made heavy demands on churches (e.g. Louis the Pious’ lists of monasteries owing gifts / mil service / prayers). Royal access to church resources was fully institutionalised. Loyalty and efficiency of ecc dignitaries was more reliable than that of secular office-holders.
- All this crucial to expansion of Car empire - system of church contributing institutionally to state not found elsewhere. Powerful monarchs required to boost church’s institutional integrity. Carolingians dependent on church’s mil service and its prayers (e.g. conquered Lombard monasteries expected to pray for Charlemagne after 774 - test of loyalty).
- Slippage of royal power in W Francia indicated by passage of royal monasteries into aristocratic hands (e.g. St Vaast to Count of Flanders / St Denis to Odo son of Robert).
- Dhondt: squandering of Carolingian fisc by Charlemagne’s successors à undermining of Car power - collapse of empire due to lack of resources. BUT difficult to gauge this due to use of unrecorded benefices instead of direct grants. Note also peripheral lands granted away - this indicates royal control / rationale. Key point = Car pol geog must include ecc as well as secular; most of these grants made to churches à not losses to state.
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