IV. Their Feudal Rights.

These advantages are the remains of primitive sovereignty.

Let us follow him home to his own domain. A bishop, an abbé, a
chapter of the clergy, an abbess, each has one like a lay seignior;
for, in former times, the monastery and the church were small
governments like the county and the duchy. -Intact on the other bank
of the Rhine, almost ruined in France, the feudal structure everywhere
discloses the same plan. In certain places, better protected or less
attacked, it has preserved all its ancient externals. At Cahors, the
bishop-count of the town had the right, on solemnly officiating, "to
place his helmet, cuirass, gauntlets and sword on the altar."[20] At
Besançon, the archbishop-prince has six high officers, who owe him
homage for their fiefs, and who attend at his coronation and at his
obsequies. At Mende,[21] the bishop, seignior-suzerain for Gévaudan
since the eleventh century, appoints "the courts, ordinary judges and
judges of appeal, the commissaries and syndics of the country." He
disposes of all the places, "municipal and judiciary." Entreated to
appear in the assembly of the three orders of the province, he
"replies that his place, his possessions and his rank exalting him
above every individual in his diocese. He cannot sit under the
presidency of any person; that, being seignior-suzerain of all estates
and particularly of the baronies, he cannot give way to his vassals."
In brief that he is king, or but little short of it, in his own
province. At Remiremont, the noble chapter of canonesses has,
"inferior, superior, and ordinary judicature in fifty-two bans of
seigniories," nominates seventy-five curacies and confers ten male
canonships. It appoints the municipal officers of the town, and,