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 Orléans 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 among whom are hardly to be distinguished from the secular nobility, Below these, and a long distance below, come the inhabitants of the larger towns, the merchants and the better class of artisans. At the bottom, trodden down to the very soil from which they are forced to extract food for all the rest, and perhaps, if any is left, for themselves, come the peasantry. Since the disruption of the great conglomerate empire of Charlemagne, the power of the nominal kings of France had been gradually restricted. Powerless to protect the kingdom from the attacks of foreign enemies, the king was also powerless to preserve order within it. Personal immunity from force could be obtained only by the use of force; and if one were not strong enough to protect one's self, the only way was to purchase protection from a stronger neighbor. This was the reason for the growth of the complicated system of feudalism, with whose remote origins and exact details we are not here concerned.