In the ninth and tenth centuries the Moslem control of the Mediterranean, the raiding of European coasts and towns by Normans, Magyars, and Saracens accelerated this localism of life and defense, this primitivism of thought and speech. Germany and Eastern Europe were a maelstrom of migrations, Scandinavia was a pirates’ lair, Britain was overrun by Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Danes; Gaul by Franks, Normans, Burgundians, and Goths; Spain was torn between Visigoths and Moors; Italy had been shattered by the long war between the Goths and Byzantium, and the land that had given order to half the
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