It was chiefly in the reorganization of the Church in Flanders, and, in the first place, of the great religious houses, that Arnulph sought to accomplish the object he had in view. Matter of no little moment in days when the lay aristocracy knew no trade but war, and the peasant was still his lord's chattel, when the monastery was not only the last shelter of learning and the arts, but the only agricultural college and the only technical school, when the monk was the one physician, and the one intelligent artisan, and the clerk, alike legislator, notary, scribe, was almost the only man who knew how to sign his name. Though the Church had suffered much at the hands of the Danes, monasticism was not, at this time, at such a low ebb in Flanders as it was in England in the days of Alfred. In England it was practically extinct, in Flanders it had only languished. Nevertheless, and strange as it may seem, it was chiefly owing to the efforts of Count Baldwin's English wife, Alfrida,[3] the daughter of our own King Alfred, that monasticism became once more in Flanders a burning and a shining light. She it was who first tended the dying flame. The good work was completed by her son Arnulph, who, in this matter, played much the same part in his own dominions as that played in England by King Edred, his first cousin. He was the builder or restorer of eighteen great monasteries. The famous Chapter of St. Donatian at Bruges was founded and munificently endowed by him. The Collegiate Church of St. Mary at Ardenburg, and the Collegiate Church of St. Peter at Thorhout, were each of them his handiwork, and a host of minor foundations bear witness to his untiring energy and zeal. He himself acted as abbot, or chief officer, of the great Abbey of St. Bertin at St. Omer. He was the friend and patron of St. Gerard, the thaumaturgus of Brogne, and through him he reformed more than one religious house. He had received St. Dunstan with hospitality when he fled before the fury of Æthelgifu, and in after years, when the storm had passed and Dunstan had returned to his own land, we find the Margrave of Flanders among his correspondents. A letter still extant--_Epistola Arnulfi ad Dunstanum Archiepiscopum_ (MS. Cotton, Tiberius A. 15, fo. 159b)--bears witness to their mutual esteem and affection.