Explore "Europe and the Faith" by Hilaire Belloc on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I said in my last chapter that the Dark Ages might be compared to a long sleep of Europe: a sleep lasting from the fatigue of the old society in the fifth century to the spring and rising of the eleventh and twelfth. The metaphor is far too simple, of course, for that sleep was a sleep of war. In all those centuries Europe was desperately holding its own against the attack of all that desired to destroy it: refined and ardent Islam from the South, letterless barbarian pagans from the East and North. At any rate, from that sleep or that besieging Europe awoke or was relieved.
I said that three great forces, humanly speaking, worked this miracle; the personality of St. Gregory VII.; the brief appearance, by a happy accident, of the Norman State; and finally the Crusades.