From the seventh to the ninth century important abbeys flourished in nearly all the provinces now comprised in modern France. Later, under the immediate successors of Charlemagne, great monasteries were founded in all the countries which made up his dominions. Charlemagne himself had greatly contributed to the development of religious institutions by his reliance on the bishops, and more especially the monks who represented progress, supported his policy, and enforced his civilising mission. But after his death the study of art and science declined so rapidly that a radical reform became necessary in the tenth century, a reform which seems to have had its birth in the Benedictine Abbey of Cluny, established in Burgundy about the year 930. From this hasty sketch of monastic organisation some idea may be gathered of the importance of religious institutions in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and of the immense services they had rendered the State by diligent and useful toil, among the chief fruits of which must be reckoned the revival of agriculture, and the development of the sciences and arts, more especially architecture. Monastic architecture exercised a great and decisive influence upon national art by its vast religious buildings, the precursors of our great cathedrals. Until the middle of the twelfth century science, letters, art, wealth, and above all, intelligence--in other words, omnipotence on earth--were the monopoly of religious bodies. It is bare historic justice to remember that the Middle Ages derived their chief title to fame, and all their intellectual enlightenment, from the abbeys, and that the great religious houses were in fact schools, the educational influence of which was immense. It must be borne in mind that if the great cathedrals of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were not actually constructed by the monks, their architects were nevertheless the pupils of monks, and that it was in the abbey schools, so generously opened to all, that they imbibed the first principles of the art they afterwards turned to such marvellous account. The study of architecture in particular was not merely theoretical. It was demonstrated by the monks in their important monastic buildings, the crowning point of which was the abbey church, a structure often larger and more ornate than contemporary cathedrals.