Events such as these will, probably, be thought sufficient to account for any amount of social disorder and literary decay. As to the supposed prosperity enjoyed by the monasteries in this darkest of all the dark ages, it might be illustrated by a catalogue of their sacked and smoking ruins. Fontanelles, with its noble library, St. Ouen and Jumièges, were all burnt by the Norman sea-king Hasting in 851. Marmoutier was pillaged two years later, one hundred and sixteen of the monks being slain. St. Martin’s of Tours was burnt in 854, and most of the seats of learning founded in the former century--such as the abbeys of Corby, Liege, Stavelo, Prom, and Malmedy--were destroyed about the same time. By the beginning of the tenth century hardly one of the great French abbeys was left standing; and the monks being slaughtered or dispersed, their houses and lands were in many cases seized by laymen, who lived there with their wives, children, and hunting-dogs, a scandal complained of in 909 by the fathers of the council of Troli. Italy presented much the same spectacle. The abbey of Nomantula was plundered no less than seven times over--“first by Christians in the civil wars; next by the Vandals; a third time by the Saracens in 831; a fourth time by the Normans, which was _desolatio desolationum_; the sixth, and seventh time by the Huns,” who in 899 slaughtered all the monks, together with their abbot Gregory. A page might be filled with the names of French bishops massacred with their clergy. It could hardly be expected that schools and letters would greatly flourish at a time when the whole country was lit up by the flames which were destroying the only sanctuaries of learning; and when the libraries which had cost years of persevering toil in their collection were destroyed in one hour of ruthless barbarism. Mezeray, in his history of France, particularly notices the destruction of books among the calamities of the period. “Books,” he says, “were becoming scarce at this time, the wars had almost destroyed them all by burning, tearing, and other such like barbarities; and as there were none but monks who transcribed the copies, _and as monasteries were now for the most part deserted_, the number of learned men was but small.” Odericus Vitalis in like manner speaks of the irreparable loss occasioned by the destruction of those manuscripts, which furnished the only materials for compiling the history of the times, all of which had perished with the monastic libraries in which they were preserved. Hallam, however, while noticing the destruction of the monasteries and the incursions of the barbarians, sees nothing in these facts to explain that prevailing ignorance of which he elsewhere so loudly complains. In one passage only does he so much as connect the two ideas together, and then it is only in order to direct a sneer against the monks. “As the Normans were unchecked by religious awe,” he says, “the rich monasteries were overwhelmed in the storm.