In order to understand at all the manifold relationships that existed between the monasteries and the kings and bishops of England, and between the monasteries again and the churches which lay upon, or formed part of, their property, and in order to appreciate the causes and the nature of the controversies to which these relationships gave rise in the twelfth century, it is necessary to have some conception of the social and ecclesiastical framework of the early Middle Ages, and of the development of the law and discipline of the Church during the centuries that elapsed between the dissolution of the Roman Empire and the simultaneous emergence of the perfect feudal state and of the movement of legal and disciplinary reform associated with the name of Gregory VII. This is all the more necessary since English ecclesiastical historians have for the most part neglected to study early Roman and Carolingian practice, and have therefore tended to ignore the immense legacy from the past that gives a character to so many institutions in this country, and have looked only at the superficial, proximate causes of much that happened under the Norman and Angevin monarchs. Before, therefore, approaching the study of the movement among the black monks towards exemption from the jurisdiction of the diocesan bishop, and of the parochial organization dependent upon the monasteries, a sketch must be attempted of the changes in the ecclesiastical fabric between the days of St Benedict and those of St Bernard, and of the consequent change in the relationship of the monasteries to the other members of the Church.