m by which they were consecrated of the
Church, and the support of the French jurists, contained within them a
promise and potency of future grandeur. They were the Lord's anointed,
supported by the Lord's Vicar on earth: to disobey them was to disobey
God: tribal sovereignty was to give way to territorial sovereignty.
The people, long forsaken by their emperors, had in their turn
forsaken them, in order "not to be at the mercy of all the great ones
they surrendered themselves to one of the great ones" and in exchange
for protection gave troth and service. Cities, churches and
monasteries now assumed a new aspect. Paris had demonstrated the value
of a walled city, and during the latter part of the Norman terror,
from all parts of North France, monks and nuns and priests had brought
their holy relics within it as to a city of refuge. Gone were its
lines of villas from Gallo-Roman times extending freely into the
country. The ample spaces within gave place to crowded houses and
narrow streets held in a rigid ring of walls and moats. The might of
the archbishops, bishops and abbots increased: they sat in the
councils of kings and dominated the administration of justice; the
moral, social and political life of the country centred around them.
Armed with the sword and the cross they held almost absolute sway over
their little republics, coined money, levied taxes, disposed of small
armies and went to the chase in almost regal state.

The advent of the year 1000 was regarded with universal terror in
Christendom. A fear, based on a supposed apocalyptic prophecy that the
end of the world was at hand, paralysed all political and social life.
Churches were too small to contain the immense throngs of fearful
penitents: legacies and donations from conscience-stricken worshippers
poured wealth into their treasuries. But once the awe-inspiring night
of the vernal equinox that began the year 1000 had passed, and the
bright March sun rose again on the fair earth, unconsumed by the wrath
of God, the old world "seemed to thrill with new life; the earth cast
off her outworn garments and clothed herself in a rich and white
vesture of new churches." Everywhere in Europe, and especially in
Paris and in France, men strove in emulation to build the finest
temples to God. The wooden roofs of the Merovingian and Carlovingian
basilicas had ill withstood the ravage of war and fire. Stone took the
place of wood, the heavy thrust of the roof led to i