It was perhaps on account of the increased facilities for transit, afforded by the Italian fleets, that the numbers of the Latin pilgrims began now to increase so greatly. Europe was still plunged in Gothic ignorance, but the traders brought home tales which fired the imagination of artistic peoples such as the Provençals, the Normans, and the Kelts were by nature. They heard, as they sat in their grim castles frowning down on some walled village, of great cities in the East full of treasure, and brightened with glorious works of art. They contrasted the splendours of the sunny South, in Italy and in Syria, with the gloom of the North. They learned from the palmer, or the Jewish trader, wonderful legends of Indian and Arab origin, and heard of sacred places and miraculous relics. Palestine was a fairy-land to them; Damascus was a city to sack. They learned also that Christians in the East were persecuted, and trade obstructed, by savage Tartars who demanded endless taxes, who danced on the altar of the Holy Sepulchre, and pulled the patriarch by the beard. Their wrath was roused, and they desired to aid the emperor of Byzantium, who was appealing to them for help. [Sidenote: POPE HILDEBRAND] The Church also was recovering from the utter degradation into which it had fallen after the time of Charlemagne. Hildebrand appeared as a great Pope in 1073 A. D.--an Italian probably of Gothic origin, who reformed the Latin episcopacy, and freed himself, by aid of Normans, from the German emperor (whom he brought to his knees at Canossa), yet who died in exile at Salerno in 1085 A. D. The dreamers of dreams are the makers of history. Hildebrand dreamed of an united feudal Europe, under the Pope of Rome as its head. He saw the danger to Christendom of the great Moslem empire under Melek Shah which threatened Byzantium. He was the first to urge on princes the necessity of union, and of a “general passage” beyond the sea for the support of the Greek empire, and for the rescue of the holy places. Appeal had been made to Pope Sylvester II. as early as 1000 A. D., and he had written a letter[493] in favour of the Eastern Christians, but nothing could then be done. The dream of Hildebrand was fulfilled within a generation.