THE early Christians of Chartres were scattered and their churches destroyed during the final persecution under Diocletian. When, therefore, the disciples of S. Denis, S. ChÉron and S. Martin came preaching the Gospel through the valley of the Loire, they found but few faithful among the descendants of those who had been converted by the first missionaries. The evangelisation of the Province by S. Martin, the great Bishop of Tours, was commemorated in the title of the church, ‘S. Martin rendant la vie,’ in reference to one of his miracles, and in that of the Monastery S. Martin-au-Val, as also in the window in the clerestory of the nave of the Cathedral (north) and of the choir. Soldier, hermit, bishop and saint, he established the monasteries of Gaul. Two thousand of his disciples followed him to the grave, and his eloquent historian, Sulpicius Severus, challenges the desert of Thebais to produce, in a more favourable climate, a champion of equal virtue. S. ChÉron, after completing his work at Chartres, turned his steps towards Paris, but was assassinated on his way at a place since named S. ChÉron-du-Chemin. His martyrdom is represented in a bas-relief of the south porch of the Cathedral.

Then Castor, Bishop of Chartres, profiting by the protection of Constantine, built a second basilica, larger than the first, erecting upon the old site a chapel to the ‘Virgin who shall bear a son,’ and, above it, the main church and the principal altar.

Meanwhile the Roman Empire in Gaul was tottering to its fall. That confederacy known as the Franks, which had been formed of the unconquered tribes that dwelt about the Lower Rhine and the Weser, had overrun Spain and Mauritania, and had been flung back from Gaul by the brilliant efforts of the Emperor Probus. Again reduced by Julian, they remained for some time loyal allies of the Empire. But under Clodion, the first of the long-haired kings of the Merovingian dynasty whose name and actions are mentioned in authentic history, they advanced as far as the Somme, and established a Gallic kingdom between that river and the Rhine. On the death of Clodion, his two sons quarrelled over their inheritance; one of them obtained the protection of Rome, the other allied himself with Attila. For the King of the Huns eagerly embraced an alliance which facilitated the passage of the Rhine and justified the invasion of Gaul.

Chartres seems to have escaped as by a miracle the murderous attack of the Huns and Franks. She owed perhaps to the obscurity of her position the immunity which Paris owed to the prayers of S. GeneviÈve. But OrlÉans was besieged and defended successfully by Anianus, a bishop of primitive sanctity and consummate prudence, until the arrival of the Roman and Gothic armies compelled Attila to withdraw his innumerable host of marauders, and at length to give battle and suffer defeat in the plains of ChÂlons. (451 A.D.)

Church of S. Aignan.

Was this Anianus that S. Aignan who founded the church which now bears his name; the S. Aignan who, with his three sisters, Donda, Monda, Ermenonda, endowed it, and was buried in the ancient crypt of that church?[16] On his tomb there was formerly to be read this couplet:—

(The body of Aignan, once Bishop of the Chartrains, lies in this crypt: his soul is in Heaven.) The crypt (restored sixteenth century) and the windows of this church are well worth seeing. The lower windows have nine of them sixteenth-century[17] glass, and nine of them nineteenth century, chiefly by Lorin of Chartres, whose atelier is in the picturesque Rue de la Tannerie. The upper windows are chiefly seventeenth-century heraldic. The church was often burnt down in the Middle Ages, and for the last time in the sixteenth century.

The architecture is therefore in the style of the Renaissance, though the main entrance belongs to the fourteenth century. The small entrance on the left of the faÇade is pleasing. The church was sacked during the Revolution and all its artistic treasures stolen. The building itself was used as a magazine, a prison and a military hospital till 1822, when it was restored to religious use by private generosity. The painfully unsuccessful polychrome decorations perpetrated by M. Boeswilwald make it impossible to remember the interior with any pleasure. Perched, as it seems, in the air, the exterior, beheld from the boulevards and bridges south-west of the town, forms, with S. PÈre and the Cathedral, one of the most prominent features of the most unforgettable view of Chartres. But the tower is destitute of grace, and the building, as a whole, devoid of any beauty of form.

If the nave were worthy of the apse and crypt, it would be another matter, and S. Aignan would be worthy of its place between S. PÈre and Notre-Dame. Approach it from the Rue Saint-Pierre by the steps of Saint-FranÇois, and the east end of the church with the enormous buttresses which support it, and the massive buttressed walls of the street which hold up the old parish cemetery, now the garden of the PresbytÈre, give you the impression of a mighty fortress frowning above you. But seen from a distance this effect is lost.

There is a legend in connection with this church worth recounting.

A poor tailor of Chartres, the story runs, made a contract to deliver himself body and soul to the Devil at the end of the year if his daughter should recover her health and make the fine marriage on which she had set her heart. At the date fixed when the tailor must fulfil his part of the bargain Satan appeared. It was evening. The man’s wife threw herself on her knees, and by her prayers and entreaties obtained the concession that the infernal treaty should not be enforced so long as the candle burning in the cottage should last. Then the cunning wife rose from her knees, blew out the candle and ran full speed with it to the Church of S. Aignan, where she hid it near the present stoup, in the first pier on the left at which the masons were then working. Wonderful to relate, the pier was immediately completed, and the candle hidden within it safe from the clutches of the Evil One.

Fifty years after the Battle of ChÂlons, the Franks, under Clovis, established the French monarchy in Gaul. It was not established by the force of arms alone.

The Merovingian King had always allowed his Gallic subjects free exercise of religious worship. Now, at the instance of his wife, Clotilda, niece of the King of Burgundy, he listened to the Bishop of Reims. He and his followers, who were equally ready to follow him to the battlefield or the baptismal font, were received into the Catholic Church at Reims.

This meant that Clovis had on his side the hundred prelates who, under the Roman Empire, had gradually acquired a sovereign power throughout Gaul in matters temporal as well as spiritual. He paid the price in rich gifts to their churches. ‘S. Martin,’ he remarked on a famous occasion, ‘is an expensive friend.’ It was to this alliance with the Church that the establishment of the French monarchy in Gaul was largely due. The valour, policy and seasonable conversion of Clovis soon added the Northern Provinces of Gaul to his kingdom, whilst the great prelates were left free to strengthen their own hold over the people with whose instructions they were entrusted. And with the Franks the social system of nobles and serfs, which was the basis of mediÆval life, was introduced.

The Dark Ages creep on. The Frankish conquest of Gaul was followed, says Gibbon, by ten centuries of anarchy and ignorance.

So far as Chartres is concerned, the conversion of Clovis is connected with the name of her first authentic bishop, Solemnis,[18] whom he caused to accompany and catechise him on his campaigns. It is even stated, though without sufficient reason, that Clovis founded the Abbey of S. PÈre (St. Pierre), of which the extremely interesting fourteenth-sixteenth century church is now all that remains. The rest is cavalry barracks.

Of the secular history of Chartres under the succeeding Merovingian Kings there is nothing worth relating. Whatever there was of sweetness and light in this barbarous epoch survived in the cloister, not the court. One turns with relief from the records of the quarrels and crimes of Clother and his sons to the story of some saintly life like that of S. Lubin, shepherd, monk, hermit, AbbÉ of Brou, and lastly, Bishop of Chartres in succession to S. EthÈre. S. Lubin was a typical and charming saint, whose name and fame still live in the hearts of the people.

His charity to the poor, his compassion for the sick and infirm was without limit. Thus, when Malledegonde, sister of the young CalÉtric, who lay at death’s door, asked the holy Bishop of Chartres for some drops of oil blessed by his hands, he did at once that which she had not dared to ask. He came in person to the bedside of her dear invalid, bathed his forehead, and prayed that he might be restored to health. Then the young man opened his eyes, and seizing the aged bishop’s hand declared that he was healed. A bas-relief on the south porch of the Cathedral portrays this incident in stone. In glass, a bishop and enthroned, you may see the saint in the second window of the northern clerestory of the nave. From that moment S. Lubin continued to take a paternal interest in the lad, and on his death CalÉtric succeeded him as Bishop of Chartres. S. CalÉtric,[19] according to his panegyrist, combined every virtue with every accomplishment, and was, in fact, the personification of that Roman urbanity which the rude manners of the French had almost banished from the Gallic world. His tomb, as we have already seen, is now in the Cathedral crypt, whither it was removed from the Chapel of S. Nicholas, when that building, which was formerly adjacent to the apse of the Cathedral, was destroyed in 1702 to make room for the present bishop’s palace.[20] S. Lubin, like most of the bishops of the sixth and seventh centuries, was still less fortunate in the place of his burial. He was interred in the crypt of

S. Martin-au-Val,

which probably marks the site of the chief extra-mural cemetery of the Chartres of those days. This asylum of the dead was more than once profaned by the ravages of the Northmen and the excesses committed during the civil and religious wars. The nave and aisles were seriously damaged in the fourteenth century by the bands of English soldiers and marauders who overran the country at that time. The Huguenots, also, under CondÉ (1568) utterly devastated the church crypt, violating the tombs of the bishops and wantonly burning the building. The tomb of S. Lubin, indeed, was flung out of the church and was long used for domestic purposes, until at last it was cracked by the frost. Even then it was not safe from the utilitarian spirit of the day. It was turned to account when the foundations of the cemetery wall were being constructed.

The Church of S. Martin-au-Val was restored in 1659. It now serves as a chapel for the Hospice S. Brice, where between three and four hundred inmates are provided for.

It is not without reason that I have spoken of this chapel here, for it is the most important illustration of the Merovingian period at Chartres. Leave the Place Michel and go down the Rue S. Brice till you come to the Rue Vangeon, which is the first street to your left. The simple front of the church with its three little turrets is now before you.[21] Go to the chief entrance of the Hospital and say that you wish to see the crypt. It lies beneath the raised pavement of the choir, and it is evident that the greater part of it, like the nave, choir and choir aisles, is tenth-century work. You will have noted in this connection the bold abaci of the piers of the nave and the peculiar elongated, round-headed arches of the choir arcade. But here in the crypt, besides the interesting capitals of the detached piers which support the vaulting, are two capitals of extraordinary interest. They are of grey marble in the western hall, on either side of the tablet to Bishop Lescot. Sixth century; Merovingian; crude and barbaric as the age which begot them, there is yet a vigour and directness about these carvings which make them not merely curious or grotesque. Nor are they meaningless. They represent, in the symbolic fashion of old days, the principle of life and death, of good and evil. They were intended, even then, as a warning to the faithful who approached the sanctuary, as a reminder of the fact that ‘the stones shall cry out.’ On the one capital, then, we have a scene of peace and love: two doves supporting the crown of peace, two others kissing. The other capital presents us with a scene of terror. An enormous, savage beast is seen emerging from a forest and seizing a man whose arm it has already half devoured. His friend, meanwhile, has gone to summon aid and is now returning, bringing to succour him a man with a lance....

There is one other matter to mention with regard to this church. That S. Aignan, of whom we have already spoken, and who, some think, was Bishop of Chartres in the third century, was found here, it is said, at the moment of his nomination, lost in prayer. The brethren had to drag him hence by force and carry him on their shoulders to be consecrated in the Church of Notre-Dame. Ever since then the Bishops-elect of Chartres pass the night preceding the day of their solemn entry into the town in pious retreat at S. Martin-au-Val.

Under Clotaire II. the French monarchy was re-established and united. The Chartrain territory was joined to Neustria and thus passed under the government of PÉpin d’Heristal, Charles Martel and PÉpin-le-Bref[22] successively. And Charles, before becoming King and Emperor under the name of Charlemagne, also ruled Neustria. PÉpin, his father, who with the aid of the Pope Zachary, had added to the authority of Charles Martel the crown of Clovis, proved by many gifts to the Church that the gratitude of the Carlovingians could be adequate to its obligations. Among his gifts it is recorded that he assigned to Notre-Dame de Chartres part of the forest of Yveline. Ten years before PÉpin was established on the Merovingian throne Chartres had suffered from one among many bitter experiences of the violence of the times.

The annals of Metz record that Hunald, son of Eudes, Count of Aquitane, revolting against PÉpin and Carloman, threw himself upon Chartres in 745, sacked and burnt it, and ‘did not spare the church consecrated to the Mother of God.’ This incident was but a fore-taste of the long and ruinous struggle which the Chartrains were destined to maintain against the invasions of those men of the North, whose appearance on the shores of the Baltic had drawn prophetic tears, it was said, from the eyes of the invincible and enlightened Charlemagne.

The church damaged by Hunald was doubtless the one which had been built in the fourth century. The wooden roof and supports were probably consumed by the flames on this occasion, but the thick Roman walls of the ancient basilica—such as you see in the martyrium—would survive many a burning. The church therefore was easily and quickly restored by Bishop Godessald, and was ere long the scene of a memorable event.

Charles, son of PÉpin, King of Aquitaine, had been made prisoner in the kingdom of his uncle, Charles-le-Chauve. He was taken before the meeting of the Estates held at Chartres (849), and there he made a declaration aloud from the ambo of the church to the effect that if he turned ecclesiastic it was of his own free will and for the love of God. He was blessed by the bishops and shorn, clad in the garb of a monk and sent to the Monastery of Corbie. Such was one of the ways in which one got rid of a dangerous rival in those days.

It was during the reign of this grandson of his, Charles-le-Fauve, that the storm foreseen by Charlemagne broke over France in a series of thunderbursts, destroying the fruits of his firm administration and wise encouragement of learning.

Warned by the troublous experiences of the times, the Chartrains were not ill-prepared for defence. But their fortifications were of no avail. We will tell the story as it is told by the monk Paul in his Latin Cartulaire de Saint PÈre de Chartres, which was written between 1066 and 1088:—

‘Chartres at that time’ (858) ‘had a large population and was the richest of the cities of Neustria. It was very famous by reason of the magnitude of its walls, the beauty of its buildings and its cultivation of the fine arts.[23] But there burst upon Neustria a Pagan race from across the seas, who came in their huge beaked boats, and baring the sword of their iniquity cruelly laid waste almost the whole country. They destroyed many seats of the holy and gave them over to the devouring flames: towns, when they took them, they razed to the ground, and the Christians they either slew or led into captivity and sold into everlasting bondage. So furious was the rage of the heathen that they rowed up the Seine ravaging the land on every side, and at length coming to the city of Chartres strove to take it, whilst they laid waste the surrounding territory and rendered it uninhabitable. The city thus cut off from support, and reduced by the loss of many citizens and the enfeeblement of others, was surprised by a night attack and taken. All the Christians were slaughtered like sheep. And the city, which had formerly endured unshaken a ten years’ siege by Julius CÆsar and had repelled the Roman and Argolic armies, for it was built of huge squared stones and strengthened by lofty towers, and was indeed on that account named The City of Stones, and it rejoiced in an abundance of aqueducts and subterranean ways by which it could be supplied with all provisions, was now permitted by Heaven to be burnt and utterly razed to the ground by a nation that knew not God. But the patience of God, which thus corrects the worldliness of His people in order that they may not perish hereafter, did not permit the cruelty of those barbarians to pass unavenged. For the Franks gathered from all sides and hastened to the spot where the enemy had left their boats upon the River Diva. There, meeting them as they returned laden with spoil, they fell upon them with so violent an onslaught that the Northmen went down before them as in autumn the leaves of the forest fall before the blasts of the north wind.’

So the good monk, with an indignant energy that is almost eloquent. The discerning reader will be able to separate in this story the wheat from the chaff. But the fact is certain that Hastings it was who took Chartres upon this occasion. He burnt the town and put to the sword the good Bishop Frotbold, with many of his followers who had sought refuge in Notre-Dame. The church itself, and the Abbeys of S. PÈre and S. ChÉron, he gave to the flames.

The Veil of the Virgin—The Cathedral Treasury.

Three years later Charles-le-Chauve, paying one of his frequent pilgrimages to the shrine which he afterwards described as the first seat of the Virgin in France, beheld the ravages of Hastings. Partly perhaps as a consolation to the inhabitants for their losses, he now made their church the depository of one of the most precious relics of the Virgin known to Christendom—her veil or inner vestment, presented[24] by the Empress Irene to the Emperor Charlemagne at Constantinople. It is and was known as the Sancta Camisia, or, in popular parlance, the Sainte Tunique or Chemisette. Hence the form by which it is represented in the arms of the chapter and in the innumerable emblems which from the thirteenth century onwards have been prepared in metal or ware as tokens for the pious pilgrim. The immediate result of the possession of this sacred veil and the miracles it wrought was an influx of pilgrims to Chartres, who brought wealth enough to enable the Bishop Gislebert to restore the ruined church. He would seem to have still followed the lines of Castor’s church, but he extended it eastwards, over and beyond the Gallo-Roman wall, raising the new sanctuary of the choir so that the floor was two or three yards higher than that of the nave, as in the case of the Church of S. Martin-au-Val, and constructing out of the martyrium a crypt where the veil might be kept safe in the time of danger.

It was not long, if we may believe the chroniclers, before the love and reverence with which all the inhabitants regarded this relic was to be justified and the reputation of the veil as the palladium of the town established.

It was in the year 911 that the Northmen, who had now come to regard Neustria as their own, burst for the last time on the land of France. The people of La Beauce fled to the forests and the churches for refuge; but the forests were soon in flames and the churches were destroyed by the ruthless invaders. The refugees fled with their flocks to seek protection within the walls of Chartres. With them they brought the relics of S. Piat,[25] as some years before they had brought the body of S. Wandegisile to aid them in their defence. For the Normans were coming, those ‘barbarians from across the seas,’ and at their head was Rollo, first Duke of Normandy, Rollo, ancestor of the Conqueror, plundering and pillaging churches and abbeys in a fit of religious madness, so the monkish chroniclers aver, against the priests who had converted to Christianity the children of Odin. He had made a vain attempt upon Paris, and now had come down the Seine, rowing as far as he could, then, leaving his ships, marched upon Chartres and invested it. But he was obliged to raise the siege. The dry fact of history probably is that the approach of Robert, Duke of France, with the aid of the Duke of Burgundy and the Count of Poitiers, compelled Rollo’s men, who were anxious lest their return should be cut off and were disheartened already by their failure to take Paris, to retire when they failed to take Chartres at the first assault. But the traditional account is certainly more picturesque. At the crisis of the siege it was to the Bishop Gasselin, ‘a holy man, glorious and just and true,’ that all men looked for comfort and courage. So BÉnoit, the Anglo-Norman trouvÈre, tells us in his poetical history of the Dukes of Normandy. And Robert Wace,[26] Jehan le Marchand[27] and the monk Paul[28] agree with him in his description of the wondrous episode which ensued. For a bishop, Gasselin was indeed a bishop, potent in prayer and skilled in that art of destroying the human species which is war. He put his trust in Heaven, but did not disdain human succour. He summoned the Dukes of Burgundy and France to his aid. Then, on the day when he learnt that they were at hand, he left the walls on which he had kept watch and ward in prayer, and, ‘tout esplorÉ et larmoyant,’ called the people to the Cathedral. There he first celebrated Mass and offered supplications; next, leaving the altar, he gave absolution to the multitude. Thereafter, having put on his pontifical robes, he, preceded by a cross, led the citizens in armed procession back to the walls. Suddenly, above the gate which is called New, he unfurled as a banner the sacred veil, flung open the portals, and bade the people fight boldly.

The sortie was well timed, for just at that moment the helmets and bucklers of the advancing Burgundians and Franks were seen glittering in the distance. The besieged fell with resistless enthusiasm upon the astonished enemy. The enemy, dazed by the glory of the precious relics, caught between the sallying citizens and the relieving force, retreated to the Hill of LÈves and there entrenched themselves. So terrible had been the slaughter that the bodies of the slain (says Paul the monk) heaped in the Eure for a while completely choked the stream. And they tell us that the Place des Épars,[29] in which to-day the principal hotels of the town are found, owes its name to the flight of the Normans who were scattered on this occasion (s’ÉparpillÈrent). Others, however, more prosaically explain the name as meaning the ‘hub’ whence the various roads of the province diverge.

It was at this juncture, when Rollo had rallied his men at LÈves, that the Count of Poitiers arrived on the scene, and bitterly he reproached his brothers of Burgundy and France for having given battle before he arrived. In high dudgeon he set off in pursuit of the enemy. But the Northmen outwitted him. Rollo despatched three soldiers into the plain to sound trumpets and thus draw off the enemy to engage an imaginary foe, whilst he and his followers effected their escape.

This signal victory long left its mark on the land. The plain near the gate where the Normans were defeated was known thereafter as the Field of the Repulse or of the Men Repulsed.[30] And the first bas-relief on the south side of the choir screen, which represents the bishop displaying the holy veil to the besiegers, also commemorates this event.

The veil was brought back in triumphant procession to the Cathedral, and shortly afterwards a skilful goldsmith of the town, Teudon by name, constructed a very rich and beautiful casket of gold and cedar wood to contain it. Many miracles were wrought in favour of the devout who sought the aid of the Virgin, like Edward III. of England and Henry IV. of France, by passing under this coffer. Numerous knights who carried the token of the veil were rescued from the greatest dangers, and women, especially queens, who wore taffeta imitations of it, were protected in the pains and perils of their travail. Countless rings and priceless jewels were inlaid in the sides of the casket and hung upon it by the grateful or the expectant, so that it soon became the most valuable treasure of Chartres, in a treasury, that is, of mediÆval jewellery such as we have to make a very systematic effort even to imagine.[31] ‘The still extant register of the furniture and sacred apparel leaves the soul of the ecclesiologist athirst.’ The register to which Pater refers in the sentence I have just quoted was composed in 1682, and an annotated edition of it has been published by M. Merlet (Catalogues des Reliques et Joyaux de Notre-Dame de Chartres). The curious reader will peruse with astonishment and scan with regret the long list of precious offerings which the exactions of kings, the exigencies of warfare and the rapacity of the revolutionists have caused in great part to disappear.

The veil, together with the casket in which it had lain for nearly 800 years, was seized during the Revolution. The casket and jewels were sold. The veil, though rent in twain, was recovered, but not in its entirety (3¼ yards by 6 feet). It is kept now in two coffers of cedar wood, covered with silver gilt. Beneath the veil is another known as the Veil of the Empress Irene, which is made of embroidered Byzantine stuff of the eighth century. The visitor to Chartres should on no account omit to see these curious relics, and the extremely rich enamelled triptich of the School of Limoges (thirteenth century, but in part eighteenth century restoration). For the rest, though the Casket of Teudon, which was valued in 1562 at £8980, without counting the diamonds and rubies, enamels and pearls which adorned it, has disappeared; though the head and the slipper of S. Anne are gone and the relics of many another saint; though the golden eagles of S. Eloi, the sapphires of King Robert, and the gems of Henry III. of England; though cameos and crucifixes of emerald or agate, crystal or ivory, have, like the tapestries of Queen Bertha and the golden girdle of Anne of Brittany, with its fifteen rubies, ten sapphires and sixty-four pearls, and the flagon which contained the blood of Thomas-À-Becket, all been seized and sold by sacrilegious hands, yet there remain to be seen the delicate incense-boat, given by Miles d’Illiers, Bishop of LuÇon, in 1540, the graceful chalice of Henry III. (1582), and the green marble altar of the English, dedicated by them in 1420, when Chartres was in their hands.

You will also notice a medal, which was struck to commemorate the outbreak of cholera in 1832 and the part played by the Sainte Chemise at that time. For not once only, or only in the mediÆval days, has the veil of the Virgin played a part in the history of Chartres. It was taken at the height of the plague, in obedience to the clamour of the people, in solemn procession through the streets, and from that moment, it is said, the plague was stayed, and all who were ill, save two, who had mocked at this act of piety, recovered.

Nor should it be forgotten that it was the possession of this veil which, when Fulbert’s Cathedral had been burnt down in 1194, stimulated the desire and provided the means to build a still larger and more beautiful cathedral, worthy to contain it, and to be, in the words of the chroniclers, ‘the very couch and chamber of Our Lady.’[32]

A few months after his defeat before Chartres, Rollo the Ganger married the daughter of Charles-le-Simple and embraced the Christian faith. Neustria was ceded to the Normans. Their depredations ceased for a while, but, under the young Duke Richard of Normandy, fifteen years later, there was a heathen reaction in Pirates’ land. Their fleets once more swarmed up the Seine, and Chartres was the central point of their attack. United in its defence, loud and frequent rang the cry of the House of France, ‘Montjoie!’ mingled with that of the Counts of Chartres and VendÔme, ‘Chartres et Passavant!’

But soon these visitations ceased. Gradually heathen Norman pirates became French Christians, their descendants feudal nobles, and Pirates’ land the most loyal of the fiefs of France. Christianity was embraced by all, from duke to peasant. By the people it was welcomed with an almost passionate fanaticism. Every road was crowded with pilgrims. Monasteries rose in every forest glade, cathedrals in every town. The Abbeys of S. PÈre, S. ChÉron and S. Martin, and the Churches of S. Lubin and S. Laumer in the neighbouring vineyards, were re-established and restored. The Church of Bishop Wulphard was built, and this restoration of religious centres meant, in a brutal age, the assertion of the rights of humanity, in an age of ignorance the encouragement of learning, of science and art, in an age of devastation the promotion, by means of pilgrimages, of industry and commerce. The growing number of windmills, wine-presses and tanneries on the monastic properties is the index of the civilising influence of the monks. The fragments of their castles remain as the sign of the more picturesque but less admirable occupation of the knights of chivalry.