With the advent of Frankish rule under Charlemagne, marked consideration immediately appears for the church and its representatives. Not alone is ample protection granted to many of the churches of the kingdom, but to it is added the important function of exemption. The greatest evil endured in those days by the ecclesiastical authorities was exactions levied on their property and oppression exercised on their dependents by the dukes and counts under whose jurisdiction lay the temporal possessions of the churches and monasteries. Consequently the aim of every bishop and of every abbot was to obtain for the possessions of his diocese or his convent an exemption more or less complete from the civil administration of the neighboring secular ruler. For a long time there was no thought in the mind of the bishop of gaining for himself the functions of temporal jurisdiction, but simply that the power of the count should be restrained with regard to church property, that is, that he should not be able to exercise his judicial control over lands belonging to the church, except by the express permission, "per licentia data," and with the concurrence of the bishop himself. This and nothing more is what is meant by all of the charters of exemption granted by the Carlovingian rulers, down to the time of Charles the Bald, when, as we shall presently see, a change was introduced. It would be useless for me to cite examples of such charters, for their number is countless, and reference may be made to any of the great collections of mediaeval documents for confirmation of what has just been said; for during the reigns of the earlier Carlovingians, the strong reverence for the church and respect for its officers which characterized the Frankish nation from the beginning led to the extension of these privileges to much the greater number of the churches in the realm. Not all churches enjoyed such grants, and not all those accorded were of the same liberal character, but the number given and the amount of liberty to the church thereby bestowed was sufficient to give to the clergy that degree of importance which ultimately culminated in making them the great lords that we find them in the tenth century. To give an idea of the tenor of these documents, I will, however, quote a few lines from the earliest one that has come under my notice in Carlovingian times, namely a diploma of the year 782, issued to Geminiano II., bishop of Modena, and preserved in the archives of that city. Here we find that: "Nullus judex publicus ad causas audiendum, vel freda exigendum, seu mansiones aut paratas faciendum, nec fidejussiones tollendum neque hominibus ipsius episcopatus distringendum," etc. This is sufficient to show the character of exemption from secular jurisdiction.[90]