OF SIX MEDIEVAL WOMEN 



were never more closely allied than they were at 

 that time. French was established by them as 

 the speech of the cultured and the high-born. 

 The Norman Conquest had made us more 

 cosmopolitan in both manners and ideas. May 

 we not look on the victory at Hastings as a 

 symbol as well as a reality ? Did it not mean 

 for us a spiritual as well as a material conquest, 

 since, mingled with the clashing of battle-axes, 

 was to be heard the chanting of the Chanson de 

 Roland I Moreover, through a desire to bring 

 about uniformity of sentiment and service, the 

 Church, though perhaps unconsciously, aided 

 this good work of general enlargement of out- 

 look by appointing outsiders to control our 

 abbeys and religious foundations. Thus, in the 

 latter half of the twelfth century, the romantic 

 movement which characterised late mediaeval 

 literature stirred in England and France alike, 

 and Marie was one of its truest and daintiest 

 exponents. Although what she relates may be 

 fiction intermingled with myth and magic, she 

 all the same pictures on her somewhat small 

 canvases the ideas of her time, and so helps to 



/make history. 

 Marie's readers and hearers were naturally to 

 \v be found amongst castle-folk. That these were 

 many we may conclude from the fact that the 

 number of castles had already come to be 

 regarded as a menace to the central government, 

 and a royal command had gone forth for the 

 demolition of many of them. That her stories 



34 



