The History of Education: Educational Practice and Progress Considered as a Phase of the Development and Spread of Western CivilizationCubberley, Ellwood Patterson
History
The History of Education: Educational Practice and Progress Considered as a Phase of the Development and Spread of Western Civilization
Cubberley, Ellwood Patterson
Education -- History
Other bands of these Northmen (Danes and Norwegians) began to prey on the
northern coast of Frankland, and in the tenth century seized all the coast
of what is now northern France and down as far as Paris and Tours. From
Tours to Corbie (see Figure 41) churches and monasteries were pillaged and
burned, Tours and Corbie with their libraries both perishing. Amiens and
Paris were laid siege to, and disorder reigned throughout northern
Frankland. _The Annals of Xanten_ and the _Annals of Saint Vaast_, two
mediaeval chronicles of importance, give gloomy pictures of this period.
Three selections will illustrate:
According to their custom the Northmen plundered East and West Frisia
and burned ... towns.... With their boats filled with immense booty,
including both men and goods, they returned to their own country. [19]
The Normans inflicted much harm in Frisia and about the Rhine. A
mighty army of them collected by the river Elbe against the Saxons,
and some of the Saxon towns were besieged, others burned, and most
terribly did they oppress the Christians. [20]
The Northmen ceased not to take Christian people captive and kill
them, and to destroy churches and houses and burn villages. Through
all the streets lay bodies of the clergy, of laymen, nobles, and
others, of women, children, and suckling babes. There was no road or
place where the dead did not lie, and all who saw Christian people
slaughtered were filled with sorrow and despair. [21]
After much destruction, Rollo, Duke of the Normans, finally accepted
Christianity, in 912, and agreed to settle down in what has ever since
been known as _Normandy_. From here portions of the invaders afterward
passed over to England in the Norman Conquest of 1066. This was the last
of the great German tribes to move, and after they had raided and
plundered and settled down and accepted Christianity, western Europe,
after six centuries of bloodshed and pillage and turmoil and disorder, was
at last ready to begin in earnest the building-up of a new civilization
and the restoration of the old learning.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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