A bishop, an abbe, 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."[1220] At Besancon, 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,[1221] the bishop, seignior-suzerain for Gevaudan 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.