when he lifts her up he finds her
dead. Then he calls four countesses, who bear the body into a convent
and inter it, with great pomp, near the altar. (II. 3705-3731.) _La
belle Aude_ has fulfilled her mission when she dies for love of Roland.
If she had been on the battlefield, she might have dressed Roland's
wounds, since the role of physician and nurse was frequently played by
women. Otherwise there is little use for women in an age of warfare, and
so we shall find most of the good women passed over in silence, and only
those of more masculine traits prominent in the earlier parts of our
story.

Before we can begin the story of those women whose names have come down
to us from the France of the year 1000, it is necessary to have some
sort of understanding of the social, if not of the political, condition
of France, to learn what sort of influences environed and moulded the
lives of women in those days. Such a survey of society, indeed, will be
useful for the whole period of the Middle Ages, and will serve as a
background for the figures of the women we shall have to consider,
whether they be saints or sinners.

At the beginning of the reign of the good King Robert, the France over
which he ruled was still scarcely consolidated. The power of the kings
of France hardly yet extended, in reality, over more than the little
duchy of France, a territory bounded, roughly, by the cities of Orleans
on the south, Sens on the east, Saint-Denis on the north, and Chartres
on the west. Not only were the more powerful barons, counts, and dukes,
among whom the land was parcelled out, subject to the kings only at
their good pleasure, but the very people over whom they directly ruled
were still dimly conscious of the fact that they sprang from different
races. Even as late as the middle of the tenth century we hear of
"Goths, Romans, and Salians" as more or less distinct. The fusion of the
several races on the soil of France was, however, at that time probably
complete in all but name, if we except the Celts in Brittany; even the
latest arrivals in France, the Norsemen, had ceased to be mere wandering
freebooters and were fast developing, like the rest of France, a caste
of hereditary nobles whose title and power depended upon the tenure of
land.

We may roughly divide the society of the period into four classes. In
the first we must place the nobles and their bands of retainers. In the
second we find the churchmen, the greater amon