Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Once the founder of the Carolingian Empire died, it turned into absolute
chaos. Monasteries were prone to the barbarian attacks. Many great
monasteries were completely destroyed. The monastic cultures of Ireland and
Northumbria never recovered. Christianity was even more taken back, however,
by the large threat of an organized invasion from Denmark by way of Frisia
and South-East England. In 845, Hamburg was destroyed. The main attack,
however, was in 850 and went on for another 50 years. These attacks were
highly thought out and organized. This was the fall of the Carolingian
Empire. This was the war that most threatened the existence of the Western
Christendom as a whole so seriously. No Christian land had suffered more
severly than England from the disaster of the ninth century; no where do we
see the monastic culture so completely destroyed. King Alfred had a library
of translations. In the West, the fall of the Empire was soon followed by
the fall of the authority of the State. The Eastern Christendom, however,
flourished greatly. Christianity was heartily accepted in Norway and Denmark
which greatly shaped the Scandinavian culture.