Its name in time evolved itself into Trajectum inferius or vetus, and in the Latin nomenclature of the early middle ages, it became Ultrajectum, or Trajectum Ultricensium. Under the Franks it was called Wiltrecht, which was but a short step to the name it now bears.
King Dagobert here founded the first church in Friesland, with St. Willibrod as[{338}] bishop, and St. Boniface, before he was called to Rome, here preached evangelization.
The city was ruined and devastated in the seventh century, but its rebuilding was begun in 718 by Clothaire IV. Toward 934 it was surrounded by protecting walls by Bishop Baldric of Clèves. Utrecht was frequently made the residence of the emperors, and Charles V. there built the château of Vreeburg, a species of fortress-château that was demolished by the burghers of the city at the beginning of the war of independence, 1577.
Adrien Florizoon, the preceptor of Charles V., who, at the death of Leo X., occupied the pontifical throne in 1522-23 as Adrien VI., was born at Utrecht. His house (Paushuizen) on the banks of the canal Nieuwe Gracht, now a government building, contains many pictures relative to his life and times.
For a long time the city was only a bishop's seat, but in 1559 it was made an archbishopric.
When, in 630, Dagobert, King of Austrasia, founded a chapel here, the religious foundation of the city began, and as early as in 696 it became the seat of a bishop. In the ninth century the Normans sacked the town, but thenceforth the bishops, who were then suffragans[{339}] of Liège, acquired a strength and power which assured the city freedom from molestation for a long time.
In the sixteenth century political and religious dissension combined to promote a state of unrest which was most acute. In 1577 the party which had allied itself with the Prince of Orange introduced religious reform, and in 1579 the seven provinces of Holland formed their compact of federation, and the States General held their sittings here.
The Domkerk, or cathedral, originally dedicated to St. Martin, is to-day a Protestant church. It was an outgrowth of the primitive church founded in 630 by Dagobert I., and of an abbey established by St. Willibrod.
The cathedral of St. Martin was rebuilt, after a fire in 1024, by Bishop Adebolde, "in the presence of the Emperor Henry II. and many other great personages," as the old chroniclers have it. In 1257 it was nearly entirely rebuilt by the bishop then holding the see, Henri of Vianden, but a great storm crushed in its nave in 1674, since which time the faulty juncture of the various parts has been sadly apparent.
After the destruction of the nave, the choir and the transepts formed practically the entire[{341}] building, with the tower existing merely as a dismembered and orphaned feature.