iness was spread throughout the entire kingdom, and
there was not a prince or princess but showed him high honour when he
came to visit them. There was further no monkish reform that was not
wrought by his hand, so that people called him the "father of true
monasticism." (2)

He was chosen visitor to the illustrious order of the "Ladies of
Fontevrault," (3) by whom he was held in such awe that, when he visited
any of their convents, the nuns shook with very fear, and to soften his
harshness towards them would treat him as though he had been the King
himself in person. At first he would not have them do this, but at last,
when he was nearly fifty-five years old, he began to find the treatment
he had formerly contemned very pleasant; and reckoning himself the
mainstay of all monasticism, he gave more care to the preservation of
his health than had heretofore been his wont. Although the rules of
his order forbade him ever to partake of flesh, he granted himself a
dispensation (which was more than he ever did for another), declaring
that the whole burden of conventual affairs rested upon him; for which
reason he feasted himself so well that, from being a very lean monk he
became a very fat one.

2 This prior was Stephen Gentil, who succeeded Philip
Bourgoin on December 15, 1508, and died November 6, 1536.
The _Gallia Christiana_ states that in 1524 he reformed an
abbey of the diocese of Soissons, but makes no mention of
his appointment as visitor to the abbey of Fontevrault.
Various particulars concerning him will be found in Manor's
_Monasterii Regalis S. Martini de Campis, &c. Parisiis_,
1636, and in _Gallia Christiana_, vol. vii. col. 539.--L.

3 The abbey of Fontevrault, near Saumur, Maine-et-Loire, was
founded in 1100 by Robert d'Arbrissel, and comprised two
conventual establishments, one for men and the other for
women. Prior to his death, d'Arbrissel abdicated his
authority in favour of Petronilla de Chemille, and from her
time forward monks and nuns alike were always under the sway
of an abbess--this being the only instance of the kind in
the history of the Roman Catholic Church. Fourteen of the
abbesses were princesses, and several of these were of the
blood royal of France. In the abbey church were buried our
Henry II., Eleanor of Guienne, Richard Coeur-de-Lion, and
Isabella of Angouleme; their tombs are still s