At the turn of the eighth and ninth centuries Charlemagne achieved the unheard-of: he raised from the dead the imperial idea of the West, extinct since the fall of Rome. In 800 the pope set the imperial crown on his head, and to contemporaries it seemed that the Christian order — one and sacred — had been restored in the flesh. But within the triumph lay a hidden weakness that became an idol: the whole vast order rested, in the end, on one man — on the will, the strength, and the personal authority of Charlemagne himself. Men took the empire for a holy thing, forgetting that it stood on mortal shoulders.
The reckoning came the moment its maker was gone. Charlemagne's son could barely hold the inheritance together, and in 843 his grandsons carved the realm into three by the Treaty of Verdun. The fragmentation only quickened, and by 888 the once-united empire had dissolved for good into warring domains. What had seemed the indestructible house of the West crumbled within a generation or two, as soon as the hand that held it was withdrawn.
A captivity of defenselessness followed. The weakened, splintered West lay open to raiders from every quarter: Norsemen in their longships from the north, Magyars from the east, Saracens from the south. The central power could protect no one, and people turned for safety to the nearest strong neighbor. So the feudal world was born: protection and loyalty passed from a distant emperor to the local lord — the master of a castle, who could actually shield his people from harm.
Yet on the ruins of the empire the outlines of something new slowly showed through. From the western and eastern portions of Charlemagne's realm would grow, in time, the future France and the future Germany; and the imperial idea itself did not die — it was recast, rising again in 962 as the Holy Roman Empire. One more quiet recasting was accomplished too: the dread Normans who had ravaged the West, once settled on the lands they had conquered, themselves received baptism and became Christian sovereigns. So the law of history was fulfilled: the idol of an empire resting on one man collapsed, but out of the chaos of its dissolution were born nations, states, and a renewed dream of Christian unity.