abbeys, which owed everything directly to Rome. The Venerable Bede was a monk at Jarrow. His
pupil Ecgbert, first archbishop of York, founded a cathedral school, where Alcuin was educated.
Alcuin is an important figure in the culture of the time. He went to Rome in 780, and in the course
of his journey met Charlemagne at Parma. The Emperor employed him to teach Latin to the
Franks and to educate the royal family. He spent a considerable part of his life at the court of
Charlemagne, engaged in teaching and in founding schools. At the end of his life he was abbot of
St. Martin's at Tours. He wrote a number of books, including a verse history of the church at York.
The emperor, though uneducated, had a considerable belief in the value of culture, and for a brief
period diminished the darkness of the dark ages. But his work in this direction was ephemeral.
The culture of Yorkshire was for a time destroyed by the Danes, that of France was damaged by
the Normans. The Saracens raided Southern Italy, conquered Sicily, and in 846 even attacked
Rome. On the whole, the tenth century was, in Western Christendom, about the darkest epoch; for
the ninth is redeemed by the English ecclesiastics and by the astonishing figure of Johannes
Scotus, as to whom I shall have more to say presently.
The decay of Carolingian power after the death of Charlemagne and the division of his empire
redounded, at first, to the advantage of the papacy. Pope Nicholas I ( 858-867) raised papal power
to a far greater height than it had ever attained before. He quarrelled with the Emperors of the East
and the West, with King Charles the Bald of France and King Lothar II of Lorraine, and with the
episcopate of nearly every Christian country; but in almost all his quarrels he was successful. The
clergy in many regions had become dependent on the local princes, and he set to work to remedy
this state of affairs. His two greatest controversies concerned the divorce of Lothar II and the
uncanonical deposition of Ignatius, patriarch of Constantinople. The power of the Church,
throughout the Middle Ages, had a great deal to do with royal divorces. Kings were men of
headstrong passions, who felt that the indissolubility of marriage was a doctrine for subjects only.
The Church, however, could alone solemnize a marriage, and if the Church declared a marriage
invalid, a disputed succession and a dynastic war were very likely to result. The Church, therefore,
was in a very strong position in opposing royal divorces