Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages

by Dan Jones

Under Charlemagne the Franks became increasingly interesting to the Northmen. For one thing, Charlemagne’s campaigns against the Saxons drove the Frankish frontier north, until it was nudging up against the lands of the Vikings. (From a.d. 810 to 811 there was a “Danish March” in the north of the empire, which served as a militarized buffer zone against the northern pagans.) And for another, the Carolingians founded and enriched monasteries and other Christian holy sites. Large amounts of movable wealth were placed in the hands of monks: physically the weakest men in society. Moreover, many monasteries—such as the Saint-Philibert at Noirmoutier, nestled on a spit of land at the mouth of the Loire—were on the coast or beside rivers, or in locations far from secular society, where the brothers were deliberately isolated from social violence—or so they thought.