The organization of the kingdom, the nation, and the kingship in France
was not the only great event and the only great achievement of that
epoch. At the same time that this political movement was going on in the
State, a religious and intellectual ferment was making head in the Church
and in men's minds. After the conquest of the Gauls by the Franks, the
Christian clergy, sole depositaries of all lights to lighten their age,
and sole possessors of any idea of opposing the conquerors with arguments
other than those of brute force, or of employing towards the vanquished
any instrument of subjection other than violence, became the connecting
link between the nation of the conquerors and the nation of the
conquered, and, in the name of one and the same divine law, enjoined
obedience on the subjects, and, in the case of the masters, moderated the
transports of power. But in the course of this active and salutary
participation in the affairs of the world, the Christian clergy lost
somewhat of their primitive and proper character; religion in their hands
was a means of power as well as of civilization; and its principal
members became rich, and frequently substituted material weapons for the
spiritual authority which had originally been their only reliance. When
they were in a condition to hold their own against powerful laymen, they
frequently adopted the powerful laymen's morals and shared their
ignorance; and in the seventh and eighth centuries the barbarism which
held the world in its clutches had made inroads upon the Church.
Charlemagne essayed to resuscitate dying civilization, and sought amongst
the clergy his chief means of success; he founded schools, filled them
with students to whom promises of ecclesiastical preferments were held
out as rewards of their merit, and, in fine, exerted himself with all his
might to restore to the Christian Church her dignity and her influence.
When Charlemagne was dead, nearly all his great achievements disappeared
in the chaos which came after him; his schools alone survived and
preserved certain centres of intellectual activity. When the feudal