282 FOURTH PEEIOD. A.D. 590-1049.
law and discipline gave way. Europe was threatened with a new flood of heathen barbarism. The Norman pirates from Denmark and Norway infested the coasts of Germany and France, burned cities and villages, carried off captives, followed in their light boats which they could carry on their shoulders, the course of the great rivers into the interior; they sacked Hamburg, Cologne, Treves, Rouen, and stabled their horses in Charlemagne's cathedral at Aix; they invaded England, and were the terror of all Europe until they accepted Christianity, settled down in Normandy, and infused fresh blood into the French and English people. In the South, the Saracens, cross ing from Africa, took possession of Sicily and Southern Italy ; they are described by pope John VIII. as Hagarenes, as children of fornication and wrath, as an army of locusts, turning the land into a wilderness. From the East, the pagan Hunga rians or Magyars invaded Germany and Italy like hordes of wild beasts, but they were defeated at last by Henry the Fowler and Otho the Great, and after their conversion to Christianity under their saintly monarch Stephen (997—1068), they became a wall of defence against the progress of the Turks.
Within the limits of nominal Christendom, the kings and nobles quarreled among themselves, oppressed the people, and distributed bishoprics and abbeys among their favorites, or pocketed the income. The metropolitans oppressed the bishops, the bishops the priests, and the priests the laity. Bands of robbers roamed over the .country and defied punishment. Might was right. Charles the Fat was deposed by his vassals, and died in misery, begging his bread (888). His successor, Arnulf of Carinthia, the last of the Carolingian line of emperors (thougli of illegitimate birth), wielded a victorious sword over the Nor mans (891) and the new kingdom of Moravia (894), but fell into trouble, died of Italian poison, and left the crown of Ger many to his only legitimate son, Louis the Child (899-911), who was ruled by Hatto, archbishop of Mayence. This prelate figures in the popular legend of the "Mouse-Tower" (on an
g 63. DEGKADATION OF THE PAPACY IX TENTH CENTURY. 283
island in the Rhine, opposite Bingcn), where a swarm of mice picked his bones and "gnawed the flesh from every limb," because he had shut up and starved to death a number of hungry beggars. But documentary history shows him in a more favorable light. Louis died before attaining to manhood, and with him the German line of the Carolingians (Oil). The last shadow of an emperor in Italy, Berengar, who had been crowned in St. Peter's, died by the dagger of an assassin (924). The empire remained vacant for nearly forty years, until Otho, a descendant of the Saxon duke Widukiud, whom Charlemagne had conquered, raised it to a new life.
In France, the Carolingian dynasty lingered nearly a century longer, till it found an inglorious end in a fifth Louis called the Lazy ("le Faineant"), and Count Hugh Capet became the founder of the Capctian dynasty, based on the principle of hereditary succession (987). He and his sou Robert received the crown of France not from the pope, but from the archbishop of Rheims.
Italy was invaded by Hungarians and Saracens, and distracted by war between rival kings and petty princes struggling for aggrandizement. The bishops and nobles were alike corrupt, and the whole country was a moral wilderness.1
THE DEMORALIZATION OF THE PAPACY.
The political disorder of Europe affected the church and para lyzed its efforts for good. The papacy itself lost all independ ence and dignity, and became the prey of avarice, violence, and intrigue, a veritable synagogue of Satan. It was dragged through the quagmire of the darkest crimes, and would have perished in utter disgrace had not Providence saved it for better times. Pope followed pope in rapid succession, and most of them ended their career in deposition, prison, and murder. The rich and
1 Hofler (I. 16) asserts that every princely family of Italy in the tenth cen tury was tainted with incestuous blood, and that it was difficult to distinguish wives and sisters, mothers and daughters,. See his genealogical tables appended to the first volume.