Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/322

 274 THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE was a period of anarchy and endless war, during which various ferocious barons contended, with many crimes and atrocities, for the ducal or regal title. From 1066 to 1148 a line of dukes managed to maintain themselves, but this required all their energies and left them no leisure to de- velop an organized government. They had to recognize the neighboring Dukes of Normandy as their feudal superiors, and Louis VI, King of France, surrendered to Henry I, King of England and Duke of Normandy, the right to receive homage directly from the Duke of Brittany. Between Brittany and Paris lay the possessions of the Counts of Anjou, with their capital at Angers on the Loire. The Counts Fulk the Black (Foulques Nerra), the founder of Anjou f th e dynasty and a hero of many legends, was a pitiless slaughterer of his foes on the battlefield, treacher- ous to his enemies, a great builder of churches and feudal keeps. He burned monasteries and then atoned for his sin by sensational public penances. The story also goes that he made his rebellious son, conquered after four terrible years of war, do penance by traveling several miles with a saddle on his back and then kneeling before his father, who placed his foot on his head and asked him if he was broken in yet. Fulk also made conquests at the expense of his neighbors of Blois and Brittany. But there was one person whom he could not conquer, the martyr, St. Florent. When Fulk burned the monastery of St. Florent and started to remove the precious relics of the martyr to grace his capital at Angers, the rowers could not move their boat on the Loire. The furious Fulk abused the dead saint as "an ungodly hayseed to prefer to stay at Saumur and not to allow him- self to be conveyed to the great city of Angers." But his wrath was unavailing; at Saumur the body of St. Florent remained. Fulk's son, Geoffrey M artel (1 040-1 060), was once as saucy to the pope as his father had been to the saint, yet he endowed many churches and abbeys. He was no less brave a fighter and more versed in military science and statesmanship than his father. During the remainder of that century Anjou was weakened by misrule and civil