434 G. L. Bnrr all this, or in what we are told in the lesser activities of church and society, the slightest mention of such a motive as the impending end of the world. In fine, then, the sole contemporary evidence for a panic of terror at the year looo proved to be a statement that forty years earlier one Paris preacher named it as the date of the end of the world — a preacher whose prophecy was at once refuted, and, for aught we can learn, at once forgotten. The refutation was crushing. Yet one convinced against his will might in this essay by an ecclesiastic for a conservative review suspect a partisan loyalty to the Middle Ages. And it must be confessed that its tone is a trifle polemic. But no suspicion of con- servatism could lie against the next assailant. It was the anti- clerical Raoul Rosieres, who five years later, in 1878, when about to bring out the two works' by which he hoped to help " decleri- calize " and " deroyalize " France, found it necessary to test this legend before using it. His study he published in the Revue Politique.- His analysis of the question, though slightly briefer, was not less effective. His results were the same. As he clearly knew nothing of the earlier paper of Dom Plaine and stood for so opposite a point of approach, the agreement of their conclusions was the more convincing. French scholarship needed no further enlightenment ; but the Germans, witness Von Sybel, were not yet all abreast. It was in 1883 that Heinrich von Eicken, doubtless already gathering ma- terial for what is still our best book on the medieval point of view,' brought the matter of the year 1000, by an article in a German his- torical review, to the notice of German scholars.^ Though he had seen Rosieres's paper, he knows nothing of that of Dom Plaine ; and even, he tells us, before knowing of Rosieres's, his own studies had lately convinced him of the baselessness of the tradition. It is especially from German sources that he now confirms and expands the work of the Frenchman. The latest word in defence of the legend which I remember to have heard from any competent scholar was from Leon Gautier, lecturing to his class in the Ecole des Chartes at Paris, in the win- ' His Recherches sur r Histoire Religieuse de la France (Paris, 1879), and his His- loire de la SocUte Franfaise au Moyen-Age, 987-1483 I Paris, 1880) . 2 Revue Politiqiie et I.itthaire, 2d series, XIV. 919-924 (Paris, 1878). His article is entitled : Etudes Nouvelles sur V Ancienne France : La Ligende de V An Mil. ' His Geschichte ttnd System der tnittelalterlichen Weltanschauung. ^ Forschwigen zur Deutschen Geschichte, XXHI. 303-318 (GSttingen, 1883). His article calls itself : Die Le.;ende von der Erwartung des VVeltunterganges und aer Wiederkehr Christi im Jahre 1000.
