After having determined the origin and the mode of conferring and transmitting benefices, it remains that we should learn what conditions were attached to them, and what relations were thereby formed between the giver and the incumbent. Mably thinks that benefices did not at first impose any particular obligation, and that those of Charles Martel were the first which were formally associated with civil and military services. This opinion is contrary to the nature of things;--the origin of benefices testifies to the contrary. They were, as, in Germany, gifts of horses or of arms and banquets had been, a mode of attaching companies to the benefactor. This relation in itself involves an obligation. Mably's idea is equally contradicted by facts. In all the disputes which arose between the incumbents and the Merovingian kings, the benefices are always vindicated in behalf of those who kept faith with their patron. No complaints were made when those were seen to be despoiled who had failed to render the fidelity that was due from them. Siggo we find losing the benefices of Chilperic in 576, because he had forsaken his allegiance and passed over to Childebert II. The law of the Ripuarians pronounced the confiscation of the goods of every man who had been unfaithful to the king. Marculf gives the formula of the act by which a man was received into the number of the faithful. Charles Martel, in giving benefices to his soldiers, only imposed upon them the obligations that had always followed on such appointments. Only these obligations became progressively more formal and explicit, precisely in the measure that the ancient relations of the chief and his associates tended to become weakened and to disappear, in consequence of the dispersion of his men and their settlement on their own properties. {122} Vassalage. Originally, the associates lived with their chief, around him, in his house and at his table, in peace, as well as in war: they were his vassals, according to the original sense of the word, which signified the _guest_, the _companion_, an individual attached to the house. [Footnote 13] [Footnote 13: There are different etymologies of the word _vassus_, from _haus_, a house; from _gast_, a guest; from _fest_, fast, established; from _geselle_ (vassallus). The word _Gasinde_, which expresses the _familia_, so far as it comprises the individuals inhabiting the house, the _guests_ in opposition to the _mancipia_, induces me to think that _vassus_ comes from _gast_. (Anton, _Gesch. der Deuts. Land._, vol. i. p. 526.) We read in the Salic law (tit. 43): _Si quis romanum hominem convivam regis occiderit, sol. 300 culpabilis judicetur_. The Roman editors of this law would have rendered the word _gast_ by _conviva_.]