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Coming out of the weather anomaly of 535 AD ~ which maybe lasted until 542, much of Western Europe really didn't exist anymore ~ unless you are willing to buy into the idea that Wales and Ireland were just about the only places deserving of the term "civilization".

I've been working my way forward pretty much a decade at a time and it looks like a "foreign" non Western concept called Monasticism took over most of "religious life" for a very long time, and that, in turn became pretty much the norm for any semblance of civilized life.

A thousand years later monasteries did not have the reputation they'd earned way back then.

As I research into this phenomenon I'm trying to keep two views in mind ~ (1) That monasticism did preserve civilization in a dark period, and (2) That monasticism failed to preserve all of the best elements of civilization.

Currently I'm looking into the period when monasticism came to Brittany ~ who the people were, how did they live, what levels of education they had, why they sent out missionaries, to where, and why did they accept other missionaries from distant lands into their centers.

I already know that eventually the great monasteries fell, even at the hands of their Most Catholic friends and supporters ~ not sure that's a politically unbiased enough period to figure out why they really disappeared as widespread useful institutions. Might be something in that vast body of history to give me some story lines that tie the Bourbonnaise in all their manifestations to the phenomenon of their fall.