From the Carolingian period onward, it even became attractive to enter voluntarily into this status. In Eastern Francia (the Rhineland and beyond) this transformed ecclesiastical freedmen into religiously defined social groups with potentially distinct aims, religious tasks, and organizational structures, and a shared notion of freedom. As ecclesiastical institutions regarded their patronal rights over freed persons as part of inalienable church property, the patronal relationship became permanent and inheritable. In an increasing number of situations, however, the patron became an ecclesiastical institution, since slaves and freed persons were often given to churches and monasteries. In many cases it entailed a basic set of obligations. In the early medieval west, patronate, as adapted from Roman law, was a fundamental category in determining the legal status of freedmen.
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