But it was not in the administration of municipal affairs alone, that the clergy were possessed of political power. They had no small share in making laws, as well as in executing them. This was especially the case in Spain. The laws of the Visigoths, instituted at the council of Toledo, were compiled by the bishops. Here the influence of the church was decidedly beneficial. Those laws exhibit traces of a philosophic and Christian spirit. "Amongst the barbarians, men were valued at a fixed rate, according to their situations; the barbarian, the Roman, the freeman, the vassal, were not estimated at the same sum: their lives were made matter of tariff. The principle of men being of equal value in the eyes of the law was established in the code of the Visigoths. With regard to the system of procedure, we find the oath of compurgatores and the judicial combat displaced for the proof by witnesses, and such a rational examination into facts as might be adopted in any civilized society. In a word, the whole Visigoth code bears a wise, systematic, and social character. We perceive in it the labours of that same clergy which held command in the councils of Toledo, and operated so powerfully on the government of the country."[3] The judicial prerogatives and legislative influence of the bishops of the church, were backed by the extravagant veneration of the priestly office, so natural to such a state of society as that which prevailed at the commencement of the middle ages; and these causes combined to elevate the rulers of the church to the loftiest position in society. As an example of the power of the clergy, and of the precedence which they claimed for themselves, as well as of the social manners of the period, we may quote an anecdote of the famous Martin, bishop of Tours, in the fourth century, recorded in his life, by Sulpicius Severus. Dining once at the royal table, the emperor Maximus ordered the cup to be first offered to the bishop, expecting next to receive it himself. But the bishop handed it to a presbyter, who was sitting by him, as an indication that a priest took precedence of a prince. On another occasion, the empress waited on this celebrated ecclesiastic, in the capacity of a menial, preparing his food, bringing water for his hands, standing motionless by his side, in the attitude of a slave; presenting him with wine, reverently collecting the crumbs which fell from his table, and above all, in imitation of the woman in the gospel, bathing his feet with her tears, and wiping them with the hair of her head.[4] In the spirit thus displayed by this haughty prelate, the churchmen of that day maintained that the priesthood was above the crown, as much as heaven is nobler than the earth, and the soul than the body: and acting upon that principle, we find the bishops of France in the ninth century deposing Louis, the son of Charlemagne. An ecclesiastical council in the same kingdom