And as this technology combined with the effects of a fluctuating climate, landholding became ever-more profitable and landowners had ever-more disposable income to spend. But what to spend it on? One very good answer was salvation. As we have seen, the rise of the Carolingians changed the way western Europe was politically constituted. The drawing together of numerous fractured, post-Roman “barbarian” polities into a revived Christian empire provided a firmer central government, and directed major spheres of warfare to the fringes of the organized Christian west—pagan central Europe, Muslim
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