In proportion as the town, the name of which was by the Franks changed into Strasburg, increased in importance and population, the Merovegian kings granted greater favours to the church founded by one of their predecessors. The valuable donations they bestowed on the bishopric of Strasburg, enabled the inhabitants to embellish and enlarge the Cathedral. In 675 Dagobert II granted to bishop Arbogast the town of Ruffach with the castle of Isenburg and a vaste domain that he freed from tax and royal jurisdiction and which on that account was called superior _Mundat_. A no less important gift was that from Count Rudhart, who made over to the church of Strasburg, in 748, Ettenheim with several neighbouring villages on the right bank of the Rhine. Many other eminent personages of this country increased successively by their liberality the wealth of the episcopal see. A great advantage was granted by Charlemain in 775, which was to exempt the subjects of the bishopric from all tolls and taxes imposed upon the traders travelling through the empire. At that time considerable sums had already been employed to adorn the interior of the Cathedral. In the year 826, the abbot Ermold the Black, living in exile at Strasburg, speaks with enthusiasm of the _beautiful temple of the Virgin_ and of the other altars that decorate it. This ecclesiastic, with great ardour changed the metal of the antique statues he could yet find into sacred vases; a bronze Hercules, two cubits high, alone escaped the pursuit of his pious zeal; after preserving it several centuries in the Cathedral, it was at last sold, and is now at Issy near Paris. A fire, which in 873 destroyed a portion of the church and all its archives, occasioned, no doubt, important repairs, and this event was the cause of a new royal confirmation of all the possessions of the church. In 1002 it was plundered, profaned and set on fire by the soldiers of Hermann, duke of Suabia and Alsacia, who was then contending with Henry of Bavaria for the imperial crown, Strasburg and its bishop Wernher having declared for the latter. Subdued by Henry II, Hermann was compelled to repair the damage caused to the church by placing at bishop Wernher's disposal the income of the abbey of Saint-Stephen of which he was the patron. With these funds, which the bishop increased by means of a new levy of taxes and by indulgences, he was preparing to restore his Cathedral, when in 1007 a thunderbolt achieved its destruction.