rebellious sons, who were reduced to submission only at the price of a
protracted and bloody campaign in Burgundy. The broken-hearted father
did not long survive his victory. He died in 1031, and the benisons
and lamentations of the poor and lowly winged his spirit to its rest.
If we may believe some writers, pious King Robert's memory is
enshrined in the hymnology of the Church, which he enriched with some
beautiful compositions. He was often seen to enter St. Denis in regal
habit to lead the choir at matins, and would sometimes challenge the
monks to a singing contest.

In 1053, towards the end of Henry I.'s almost unchronicled reign, an
alarming rumour came to Paris. The priests of St. Ermeran at Ratisbon
claimed to have possession of the body of St. Denis, which they
alleged had been stolen from the abbey in 892 by one Gisalbert. The
loss of a province would not have evoked livelier emotion, and Henry
at once took measures to convince France and Christendom that the true
body was still at St. Denis. Before an immense concourse of bishops,
abbots, princes and people, presided over by the king, his brother and
the archbishops of Rheims and of Canterbury, the remains of St. Denis
and his two companions were solemnly drawn out of the silver coffers
in which they had been placed by Dagobert, together with a nail from
the cross and part of the crown of thorns, all locked with two keys in
a chest richly adorned with gold and precious stones, and preserved in
a vault under the high altar. After having been borne in procession
they were exposed on the high altar for fifteen days and then restored
to their resting-place. The stiff-necked priests of Ratisbon,
fortified with a papal bull of 1052, still maintained their claim to
the possession of the body, but no diminution was experienced in the
devotion either of the French peoples or of strangers of all nations
to the relics at St. Denis.

The chief architectural event of Henry's reign at Paris was the
rebuilding on a more magnificent scale of the Merovingian church and
abbey of St. Martin in the Fields (des Champs), whose blackened walls
and desolate lands were eloquent of the Norman terror. The buildings
stood outside Paris about a mile beyond the Cite on the great Roman
road to the north, where St. Martin on his way to Paris healed a
leper. The foundation, which soon grew to be one of the wealthiest in
France, included a hostel for poor pilgrims endowed by Philip I. with