Cathedral churches and monasteries seem to have been immensely rich by the end of the Merovingian period in the early eighth century, partly because of the enthusiasm of the early Frankish nobility for their new religion and its promise of salvation—which gifts might have been thought to buy—and partly because of lands which wealthy Roman aristocrats brought to the church as they entered its hierarchy as bishops and abbots. Following on this there was a period of spoliation of church lands, to provide fiefs for warriors, during the course of the eighth century.