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432 G. L. Burr eral. In 1861 the French archaeologist Auber denied and dis- proved its effect upon architecture. In 1867 Olleris, the editor of the works of Gerbert, felt forced to exclaim : " One does not see that this fatal date then inspired in anybody the terror which was later singularly exaggerated by ignorant monks." But it was not till 1873 that a scholar took the legend seriously in hand. Then, at last, in the Revue des Questions Historiques the Benedictine Francois Plaine put it to a sifting so thorough that his might well have been the last word.' Dealing first with the monk- ish historians of the later Middle Ages, he showed that the story was no exaggeration of theirs, since not one of them mentions it at all. Then, taking up one by one the contemporary annalists of the early eleventh century, Italian, German, French, English, he pointed out their utter silence as to such a panic, nay more, how much in them seems incompatible with such a thing. Next he dis- cussed the true meaning of that handful of passages which to Ba- ronius, to Robertson, to Michelet, had seemed to imply such a ter- ror. True it is that the Council of Trosly reminded the bishops that " soon we shall behold the majestic and terrible day when every shepherd with his flock shall appear before the supreme Shep- herd." But the Council of Trosly was in the year 909, its words specify no date for the end of things, and they were only such words as had been constantly heard since the birth of Christianity. The abbot Adson, it is true, wrote, about the year 954, a booklet on the Antichrist. But it was only a book of exegesis, meant to enlighten Queen Gerberga on an obscure point of the faith, and it nowhere intimates that the author himself or anybody else thought Anti- christ at hand. It is true that Abbo of Fleury tells of a preacher at Paris who looked for the end of the world in the year lOOO; but he tells us also that he himself refuted him from Scripture on the spot, and, though it is clear from the allusion to his youth that this could hardly have been later than the year 960, while Abbo wrote his narrative in 998, he nowhere intimates that the delusion was ever heard of again. True, he represents the people of Lor- raine as later (it must have been about 975) terrified at the pros- pect of Annunciation's falling on Good Friday ; but this conjunc- tion was due in the year 992, and he not only tells us that the de- lusion was refuted (which was the easier because the two days had already fallen together more than once) but that it was dispelled.^ Nor can it be denied that the monk William Godel, writing a ' Revue des Questions Hitoriques, XXIII. 145-164. Paris, 1873. 2 His Apologeticus, in which these passages occur, is addressed to the King of France, and in it he is demonstrating his own orthodoxy by recounting the errors which during his lifetime he has known and fought.