It is clear that in the sixth-century state of mind in Gaul nothing was purely secular. As far as possible all secular elements had been expelled. Men did not meet the objective realities of society and of nature as they were; there was a superstitious interpretation for everything. The hope in such a condition of things lay only in unconscious developments which might break through the closed system of thought before the latter realized that it was on the defensive. The most promising element in the situation was the Frankish state. Apparently the Frankish kingship was not to any large extent a magico-religious institution, but simply a recent development arising out of the conquest. As an institution it was not grounded in the superstitious past, and the cold hostility of the bishops kept it from the development usual in a benighted society. To this chance we may perhaps attribute a momentous result; in it lay the possibility and promise of a secular state. In the case of King Chilperic we apparently have a premature development in this direction. We must read between the lines when Gregory speaks of him. Gregory calls him “the Nero and Herod of our time,” and loads him with abuse. He ridicules his poems, and according to his own story overwhelms him with an avalanche of contempt when he ventures to state some new opinions on the Trinity. The significant thing about Chilperic was this, that he had at this time the independence of mind to make such a criticism, as well as the hard temper necessary to fight the bishops successfully. “In his reign,” Gregory tells us, “very few of the clergy reached the office of bishop.” Chilperic used often to say: “Behold our treasury has remained poor, our wealth has been transferred to the churches; there is no king but the bishops; my office has perished and passed over to the bishops of the cities.”[36] Chilperic was thus the forerunner of the secular state in France. E. B. FOOTNOTES: [1] Besides Clermont and Tours in which cities Gregory spent most of his life we hear of stays at Poitiers, Saintes, Bordeaux, Riez, Cavaillon, Vienne, Lyons, Chalon-sur-Saône, Châlons-sur-Marne, Rheims, Soissons, Metz, Coblentz, Braine, Paris, Orleans. Monod, _Sources de l’histoire Mérovingienne_, p. 37. [2] Childebert the elder is represented as saying: _Velim unquam Arvernam Lemanem quae tantae jocunditatis gratia refulgere dicitur, oculis cernere._ _H. F._ III, 9. [3] In France, including Alsace and Lorraine, there are at the present time three thousand six hundred and seventy-five churches dedicated to St. Martin, and four hundred and twenty-five villages or hamlets are named after him. C. Bayet, in Lavisse, _Histoire de France_, =2=1 p. 16. [4] C. Bayet, in Lavisse, _Histoire de France_, =2=1, pp. 13 ff.