king, such as was often allowed to private individuals; that is, they
were simply grants of royal protection, and were not similar to the
later grants which included both protection and privilege.[89]

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,