There were other repercussions of the arrival of the Church into a wholly rural and tribal society. Those who donated land to monasteries were unwilling, and perhaps, according to barbarian land law, often unable, to regard these donations as absolute. In barbarian societies the kin had certain rights in the land which was controlled by the head of the family. Inheritance was according to fairly rigid rules, which differed from people to people, but all of which insisted on family property going to particular relatives, sons, daughters, brothers, uncles, of the deceased. A will, as in Roman law, which left land to the Church or to some individual, by its very nature disinherited the rightful heirs. The Church, which depended for its survival and expansion upon gifts of property, was familiar with Roman legal ideas of property and fought hard to introduce changes in barbarian custom, with the help of kings. In the Frankish kingdom we find Frankish nobles disregarding Frankish law in the sixth century, and making wills in favour of the Church (although, Gregory of Tours lamented, King Chilperic used to tear such wills up). Kings seem to have been able to intervene to change the status of land, or nobles could get round the law by donating the land which the king had given them as a reward for their services, rather than alienating their ancestral land. The charters which recorded the donation of land to monasteries always threatened those who violated such donations with dire penalties; it was probably the legitimate heirs of the donor that the monastery was most worried about, and occasionally they did indeed try to take the land by force. But in Ireland a compromise came into being, which was to be followed elsewhere in northern Europe, whereby the donor's kin were agreed to have certain rights in the monastery. Thus many monasteries became 'family monasteries', where the abbot was drawn from the founder's kin, monastic estates would be leased at good terms to them, hospitality given them, and other favours granted. The kinship system which pervaded society thus invaded the monasteries too, which was obviously a worry for those enthusiasts who saw monasticism as a way of escaping all the ties and temptations of this world. One of these enthusiasts, Columbanus,

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