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Updated: June 2, 2025
The Capitularies are full of repressive provisions; but the incessant reiteration of these threats only shows the perseverance of the evil and the impotency of the government. Oppression, moreover, varies but little in its methods. The complaints of the free proprietors, and the groans of the plebeians at the time of the Gracchi, were one and the same.
Charlemagne was no insignificant legislator. His Capitularies may not be equal to the laws of Justinian in natural justice, but were adapted to his times and circumstances. He collected the scattered codes, so far as laws were codified, of the various Germanic nations, and modified them. He introduced a great Christian element into his jurisprudence. He made use of the canons of the Church.
Amongst Charlemagne's sixty-five Capitularies, which contain eleven hundred and fifty-one articles, may be counted eighty-seven of moral, two hundred and ninety-three of political, one hundred and thirty of penal, one hundred and ten of civil, eighty-five of religious, three hundred and five of canonical, seventy-three of domestic, and twelve of incidental legislation.
The Capitularies are the laws or legislative measures of the Frankish kings, Merovingian as well as Carlovingian. Those of the Merovingians are few in number, and of slight importance, and among those of the Carlovingians, which amount to 152, 65 only are due to Charlemagne.
In one of his capitularies of the year 810 we find this paragraph: "Alms to be sent to Jerusalem to repair the churches of God."
Two striking facts are to be gathered from these words: the first, that the majority of the members composing these assemblies probably regarded as a burden the necessity for being present at them, since Charlemagne took care to explain their convocation by declaring to them the motive for it, and by always giving them something to do; the second, that the proposal of the capitularies, or, in modern phrase, the initiative, proceeded from the Emperor.
This universal and untiring energy is the grand characteristic of Charlemagne's government, and was, perhaps, what made his superiority most incontestable and his power most efficient. It is noticeable that the majority of Charlemagne's Capitularies belong to that epoch of his reign when he was Emperor of the West, when he was invested with all the splendor of sovereign power.
Often, indeed, these Capitularies have no imperative or prohibitive character; they are simple counsels, purely moral precepts. We read therein, for example, "Covetousness doth consist in desiring that which others possess, and in giving away nought of that which one's self possesseth; according to the Apostle it is the root of all evil." And, "Hospitality must be practised."
This universal and untiring energy is the grand characteristic of Charlemagne's government, and was, perhaps, what made his superiority most incontestable and his power most efficient. It is noticeable that the majority of Charlemagne's Capitularies belong to that epoch of his reign when he was Emperor of the West, when he was invested with all the splendor of sovereign power.
In subsequent history there is a good deal of resemblance between the capitularies' legislation of Charlemagne and his successors on one hand, the acts of Alfred, Edward the Elder, Æthelstan and Edgar on the other, a resemblance called forth less by direct borrowing of Frankish institutions than by the similarity of political problems and condition.
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