Welcome back to another episode of five minutes in church history.

On this episode I'm going to start a new series that will be returning to from time to time.

I'm simply calling it trending.

But rather than looking at what's trending in the next hour or even in the next five minutes, as our

culture may have it, let's talk about what's trending for a century.

And the first century we're going to look at is the 10th. What was trending in the 10th

century? What big movement? What big idea dominated the discussion and left its mark? Well you could probably make a case for any

number of things but I want to talk about Clooney. Clooney and France there was

a monastery and early early in the 10th century, the leaders who established

that monastery there saw it as a place of significant reform for the church.

A restoration, if you will, of the church.

By the time we get to the 10th century,

there was significant decline.

There was a cultural decline. We just had a century of the Vikings who

roamed and pillaged and virtually destroyed as much as they could throughout the

ninth century.

Towards the end of that century,

many of those Norse leaders

were converted to Christianity,

and they sort of settled down.

But of course, there was the wake of the carnage left behind.

It was also a time not only of social upheaval, but of spiritual upheaval.

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