ABSTRACT
Alongside the complex structures of secular power there were other types of authority, associated with the Church. Not that Church and State were easily separable in the Merovingian period; on the contrary, the authority of the Church, and particularly that of the bishops, was connected with the power of the king, especially in the urban centres of the Frankish kingdom. Nevertheless it requires separate assessment, not least because it drew on certain areas of experience not directly dominated by the monarch.
