[176] The secular clergy were the bishops, priests, deacons, and other church officers, who lived with the people in the _saeculum_, or world, as distinguished from the monks, ascetics, cenobites, anchorites, and others, who dwelt in monasteries or other places of seclusion. [177] This is really as splendid a guarantee of equality before the law as is to be found in Magna Charta or the Constitution of the United States. Unfortunately there was not adequate machinery in the Frankish government to enforce it, though we may suppose that while the _missi_ continued efficient (which was not more than a hundred years) considerable progress was made in this direction. [178] Serfs who worked on the fiscal lands, or, in other words, on the royal estates. [179] Compare chapters 14 and 27. [180] A benefice, as the term is here used, was land granted by the Emperor to a friend or dependent. The holder was to use such land on stated terms for his own and the Emperor's gain, but was in no case to claim ownership of it. [181] The word has at least three distinct meanings--a royal edict, a judicial fine, and a territorial jurisdiction. It is here used in the first of these senses. [182] There was little room under Charlemagne's system for professional lawyers or advocates. [183] In other words, when the oath of allegiance is taken, as it must be by every man and boy above the age of twelve, all the obligations mentioned from Chap. 3 to Chap. 9 are to be considered as assumed along with that of fidelity to the person and government of the Emperor. [184] That is, the laws of the Church. [185] One of the greatest temptations of the mediaeval clergy was to spend time in hunting, to the neglect of religious duties. Apparently this evil was pretty common in Charlemagne's day. [186] The _centenarii_ were minor local officials, subordinate to the counts, and confined in authority to their particular district or "hundred." [187] In the Frankish kingdom, as commonly among Germanic peoples of the period, murder not only might be, but was expected to be, atoned for by a money payment to the slain man's relatives. The payment, known as the _wergeld_, would vary according to the rank of the man killed. If it were properly made, such "composition" was bound to be accepted as complete reparation for the injury. In this regulation we can discern a distinct advance over the old system of blood-feud under which a murder almost invariably led to family and clan wars. Plainly the Franks were becoming more civilized. [188] If a murderer refused to pay the required composition his property was to be taken possession of by the Emperor's officers and the case must be laid before the Emperor himself. If the latter chose, he might order the restoration of the property, but this he was not likely to do.