eclesiastical monarch. He maintained, however, that bishops owe their existence to the Pope, and
while he lived he succeeded, on the whole, in making this view prevail. There was, throughout
these centuries, great doubt as to how bishops should be appointed. Originally they were elected
by the acclamation of the faithful in their cathedral city; then, frequently, by a synod of
neighbouring bishops; then, sometimes, by the king, and sometimes by the Pope. Bishops could be
deposed for grave causes, but it was not clear whether they should be tried by the Pope or by a
provincial synod. All these uncertainties made the powers of an office dependent upon the energy
and astuteness of its holders. Nicholas stretched papal power to the utmost limits of which it was
then capable; under his successors, it sank again to a very low ebb.
During the tenth century, the papacy was completely under the control of the local Roman
aristocracy. There was, as yet, no fixed rule as to the election of popes; sometimes they owed their
elevation to popular acclaim, sometimes to emperors or kings, and sometimes, as in the tenth
century, to the holders of local urban power in Rome. Rome was, at this time, not a civilized city,
as it had still been in the time of Gregory the Great. At times there were faction fights; at other
times some rich family acquired control by a combination of violence and corruption. The
disorder and weakness of Western Europe was so great at this period that Christendom might have
seemed in danger of complete destruction. The emperor and the king of France were powerless to
curb the anarchy produced in their realms by feudal potentates who were nominally their vassals.
The Hungarians made raids on Northern Italy. The Normans raided the French coast, until, in 911,
they were given Normandy and in return became Christians. But the greatest danger in Italy and
Southern France came from the Saracens, who could not be converted, and had no reverence for
the Church. They completed the conquest of Sicily about the end of the ninth century; they were
established on the River Garigliano, near Naples; they destroyed Monte Cassino and other great
monasteries; they had a settlement on the coast of Provence, whence they raided Italy and the
Alpine valleys, interrupting traffic between Rome and the North.
The conquest of Italy by the Saracens was prevented by the Eastern Empire, which overcame the
Saracens of the Garigliano in 915.