Republics became aristocratic once more in government if not in constitution: this is admitted by political writers, among others by Bodin, who even says that his own kingdom of France was purely aristocratic in constitution under the Merovingian and Capetian dynasties. Till the end of the sixteenth century living witnesses to the past remained in the aristocratic kingdoms of Sweden and Denmark; and Poland, mentioned above, preserved the same constitution down to Vico's own time. The first state parliaments of Europe must have consisted like Romulus's senate of the elders of the nobility (_seniores,_ hence _seigneurs_); and were armed courts of barons or peers like the _comitia curiata_ of old. In these parliaments were decided feudal causes concerning rights or successions or the devolution of feoffs through felony or default of heirs: which causes, confirmed many times by these judgments, formed the customs of feudalism. Vico saw a relic of these parliaments in the Sacred Royal Council at Naples, the president of which assumed the title of "Sacred Royal Majesty," as the councillors did the title of _"milites,"_ and whose sentences admitted of no appeal to any other tribunal, but only a request for revision by the Council itself. The governments, beside being aristocratic, were enveloped in an atmosphere of religion to such an extent that not only were bishops and abbots very often, as we saw, feudatories, but feudatories and sovereigns adorned themselves freely with religious insignia; Catholic kings everywhere, in order to defend the Christian religion whose protectors they were, wore the dalmatic of the diaconate, consecrated their persons (whence the title "Sacred Royal Majesty"), and took rank in the church, as Hugh Capet took the title of Count and Abbot of Paris; thus as we see from the earliest documents the French lords called themselves dukes and abbots or counts and abbots simultaneously. These early Christian kings were the first to institute armed religious orders, by the help of which they defended Catholicism against Arians, Saracens and other infidels. _"Pura et pin bella"_ returned once more as in the heroic period; the globe surmounted by the cross worn by the Christian potentates on their crowns recalls the cross upon the standards in the holy wars or crusades. Heroic slavery returns, and lasts a long time among Christian nations because, considering war as the judgment of God, the victors believed the vanquished to be abandoned by God and held them no better than beasts (thus the Christians called the Turks "dogs" and were in turn called "pigs" by them). The ancients deprived the conquered of all things human and divine. The new barbarians on occupying a city endeavoured above everything to search out and carry off the tombs or relics of saints, which the peoples of that time buried and concealed with all possible care; and thus almost all translations of relics took place at this time.