Complete the account of Carolingian government.
Districts were governed by ______, inspected by travelling envoys called ______ who went out in pairs, one lay and one clerical. Royal legislation was issued as ______, of which the most ambitious is the Admonitio generalis of ______.
Word bank: counts · missi dominici · capitularies · 789 · dukes · 843
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- The envoys were sent in pairs precisely so that neither could be captured by local interests alone.
- The great programmatic capitulary orders schools and corrected texts.
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Districts were governed by counts, inspected by travelling envoys called missi dominici who went out in pairs, one lay and one clerical. Royal legislation was issued as capitularies, of which the most ambitious is the Admonitio generalis of 789.
The pairing of a layman with a churchman is the design detail worth keeping. It is an audit mechanism: two envoys with different loyalties and different sanctions, inspecting a count who is a long way from the court. When the missi stop circulating in the later ninth century, the counties drift towards heritable private power.
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