During the eighth and ninth centuries, a great number of hospitable houses were built upon the high-roads leading from France to Italy, from France to Spain, and also from Spain to the confines of civilised Germany. The Carlovingian kings, beginning with Charlemagne and ending with Charles the Bald, with the view of facilitating international commerce throughout the vast extent of their empire, ordered the establishment of a number of free houses of which travellers might make halting-places, and in which they could count upon finding not only security, but any assistance which they might require. The establishment of lazar-houses or lazarettos, the origin of which dates from the fifth century, seems to have been less a work of charity than a sanitary measure of precaution against leprosy, a terrible and incurable malady which was generally looked upon as a punishment from heaven. These lazar-houses increased in the West, as the relations of Europe with the East became more general. It is from this period also that may be dated the foundation of many _Hôtels-Dieu_, religious asylums, most of which were constructed in close proximity to the porch of the cathedral churches, taking the place of the ancient canonical infirmaries. Such was the Hôtel-Dieu in Paris, the origin of which is lost in the obscurities of the Middle Ages. After an interval of dejection and selfishness which must be attributed to the misfortunes that overwhelmed the peoples and ruined the Church, Christian charity, though permanent and persistent in each diocese, though too often ineffectual, was the distinguishing characteristic of several contemporary sovereigns. Edward the Elder, son of Alfred the Great (900–925), surnamed in the Roman breviary “the father of the poor and of the orphan,” must be mentioned as the first of them, for the various benevolent institutions which he created were never a burden upon his subjects, the whole cost coming out of his private revenues. Canute I., leader of the Danes, converted to Christianity by a French princess to whom he was married, did as much good at the close of his reign as he had done evil in the early part of it by his persecution of the Christians (1016–1036). Olaus or Olaf of Sweden, and Olaus of Norway, King of the Scandinavians, founders of two Christian monarchies in the North, intermixed works of charity with dogmatic principles, and rendered the religion of Christ popular by making it contribute to the welfare of their subjects. But the two noblest types of the Christian Church in Northern Europe during the eleventh century were Queen Margaret, wife of Malcolm, King of Scotland (1070–1095), and St. Matilda their daughter, wife of Henry I. of England.