After the death of Charlemagne, chaos came again; the church relapsed into it as well as civil society, and emerged in like manner to enter into the frame of feudalism. This was its third state. The dissolution of the Empire of Charlemagne produced in the ecclesiastical order almost the same effect as in the civil--the complete disappearance of unity, a break-up into local, partial, and individual distributions. This situation of the clergy, then, originated a struggle not previously known up to that period--namely, the struggle between the sentiments and interests of a fief-holder and those of a priest. The chiefs of the church were between these two temptations, each striving for the mastery; the ecclesiastical spirit was no longer so powerful or universal, private interest had more charms, whilst the taste for independence, and the habits of a feudal life, relaxed the bonds of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. An attempt was made in the bosom of the church to avert the effects of this relaxation, and by a system of federation, by means of general assemblies and deliberations, to organise in various quarters national churches. It is at this epoch, under the feudal system, that we perceive the greatest number of councils and convocations, of provincial and national ecclesiastical assemblies, held. This essay at unity appears to have been especially followed out in France. Hincmar, archbishop of Rheims, may be considered as the chief organ of this idea; he was constantly engaged in the labour of organising the French church; he sought out and employed all the means of intercourse and correspondence which might restore some portion of unity to the feudal church. Hincmar maintained, on the one hand, the independence of the church with regard to the temporal power, and on the other, its irresponsibility to the Papacy. It was he who, knowing that the Pope wished to come into France, and threatened to excommunicate some bishops, said, '_Si excommunicaturus venerit, excommunicatus abibit_' ('If he come here to excommunicate, he shall go back with an anathema at his own head.') But the endeavour thus to organise the feudal church, had no better success than the previous one to restore the organisation of the imperial church. There were no means available to reestablish unity in that church. Its disorganisation was continually increasing. Each bishop, prelate, and abbot, isolated himself more and more in his diocese or in his monastery. Disorders multiplied from the same cause. This period was distinguished for the greatest abuses of simony, for the completely arbitrary disposition of ecclesiastical benefices, and for the most deplorable corruption of manners amongst the priests.