Note 176 — Chapter V · THE ORIGIN OF PRIVATE CASTLES

We hear of monasteries being fortified in this way; in 869 Charles the Bald drew a bank of wood and stone round the monastery of St Denis; “castellum in gyro ipsius monasterii ex ligno et lapide conficere cœpit.” Ann. Bertinian, Migne, pp. 125, 1244. In 889 the Bishop of Nantes made a castrum of his church by enclosing it with a wall, and this wall appears to have had a tower. Chron. Namnetense, p. 45, in Lobineau’s Bretagne, vol. ii. In 924 Archbishop Hervey made a castellum of the monastery of St Remi by enclosing it with a wall. Flodoard, p. 294 (Migne). But the fortification of monasteries was a very different thing from the fortification of private castles.