Page:The Normans in European History.djvu/35

Rh the Northmen were to absorb, perpetuate, and carry to England. Fourth, religion, the Christian faith, triumphing only with difficulty in a land largely rural and open to barbarian invasion, but established firmly by the sixth century and already reenforced by monastic foundations which were to be the centres of faith and culture to a later age. Finally, the framework of political geography, resting on the Roman cities which with some modifications were perpetuated as the dioceses of the mediaeval church, and connected by Roman roads which remained until modern times the great highways of local communication. A beginning was also made in the direction of separate organization when, toward the close of the fourth century, these districts of the north-west are for the first time set off by themselves as an administrative area, the province of Lugdunensis Secunda, which coincides with later Normandy. Then, as regularly throughout Gaul, the civil province becomes the ecclesiastical province, centring about its oldest church, Rouen, and the province of the archbishop of Rouen perpetuates the boundaries of the political area after the political authority passed away, and carries over to the Middle Ages the outline of the Roman organization. In all this process there is nothing particularly different from what took place throughout the greater part of northern Gaul, but the results were fundamental for Normandy and for the whole of Norman history.