In the ninth century royalty fell and feudalism arose; the former had lost its strength, the latter had not yet acquired that which it was soon to have. The church alone had all the power. She wanted nothing--the authority in knowledge and morality, the ardent faith of the people, rich domains--in fact, while everything was breaking up and civil and political society going to pieces, the ecclesiastical body showed its unity and its healthy condition in the fifty-six councils which were held in the reign of Charles the Bald alone. The bishops, reasoning on the right of the church to interfere in the conduct of every man guilty of sin in order to correct and punish him, arrived logically at the pretension that they could depose kings and dispose of their crowns. They were not only the ministers of religion, but participated at the time in the administration of public affairs. Since Charlemagne, who brought them into the government of his empire, they may be found taking part in all affairs and speaking everywhere with authority. These were they who degraded and re-established Louis le Débonnaire, who told at Fontenailles on which side justice lay. In 859 Charles the Bald, threatened with deposition by some of the bishops because he violated his own laws, could find nothing further to reply to this assumption of authority than that “having been consecrated and anointed with the holy chrism, he could not be overthrown on his throne, nor supplanted by anyone without being heard and judged by the bishops who had crowned him king.” This right Archbishop Hincmar, of Rheims, the most illustrious personage of his day, had haughtily claimed. This power of the church was a fortunate thing in these days, when might made right, for she alone found herself in a position to keep alive the idea that justice was above strength; and to oppose the aristocratic principle of the feudal organisation, she put forward that of the brotherhood of man. In place of hereditary primogeniture which prevailed in civil society, she practised election for herself and proclaimed the rights of the intellect. If the prerogative of deposing kings which she claimed was a usurpation of temporal authority it must be recognised that the latter had no antidote but the sacerdotal power, and the weak and oppressed no other security than the protection of the churches. When Lothair II, king of Lorraine, put away without reason Queen Thietberga in order to marry Waldrada, Pope Nicholas I took up the poor, betrayed, outraged woman’s cause, and at the risk of persecution established her rights. While law was impotent and opinion without strength, it is well that somewhere there existed an avenger of outraged morality.[b] CAPETIANS AND CARLOVINGIANS (887-936 A.D.) [Sidenote: [887-911 A.D.]]