The reason for singling out the early medieval period is not only because it constituted the age of infancy, puberty, and adolescence of what later became Western Europe, but also because some of the relevant issues stand out much more clearly when they make their first appearance, that is, before they have become overlaid, encrusted, if not suffocated, by subsequent developments. The recognition of these issues is facilitated by the (comparatively speaking) simple social structure and by the low-geared exigencies of society itself. It is only in retrospect that one can appreciate, measure, and assess the achievements—or their lack—of any age, and this truism applies with particular force to the period between the sixth and ninth centuries, for it was in these centuries that the firm foundations of medieval and to a large extent of modern Europe were laid.

The choice of my subject is to express the conviction that some of the great merits of modern welfare institutions and modern social legislative measures have their definite and demonstrable roots, not in antiquity, not in the high Middle Ages, not in the nineteenth century, but roughly speaking in the Frankish age. And here it was the councils which were the chief organs either in initiating legislation or in establishing welfare institutions and making arrangements for the execution of their decrees as far as this lay in their competency. The councils to my mind constitute a vast reservoir of source-material which from the angle of my subject has barely been tapped.