The Gothic period, which began at millennium 1000 with unity of spirit and society, reached its peak under Frederick II in the 13th century. Then it plummeted so quickly in the 14th that everything was shattered. Society! Spirit! Everything!
God was still in his heaven—perhaps—but certainly not here on earth with His people. Dante’s Inferno enveloped the living. Black plague e . . .
Charlemagne ended his reign as he began it: by fighting to defend his capital at Aix la Chapelle (now Aachen). First he fought the neighboring Saxons. In the end, he fought the Danes, who were part of the Scandinavian expansion that grew with the onset of a five-century warming trend (800 to 1300). By then he was an old man of 70. The Danes exhausted him. He was carried back on a litter and . . .
Mongol Huns from Asia invaded Europe. Visigoths fled from their Black Sea homeland. Alaric led them in the sack of Rome in 410, then settled in Spain.
When Rome was sacked, refugees fled to their estates in North Africa. They questioned whether the new Christian religion caused the sacking. It happened only two decades after Theodosius made it the state religion, while Rome had been s . . .
