During the age of faith, monasteries led the spiritual revival. The monastery founded at Clunty in France in 910 was especially important. The reformers there wanted to return to the basic principles of the Christian religion. To do so, they established new religious orders. Influenced by the religious devotion and reverence for God shown by the new monasteries, the popes began to reform the Church. They restored and expanded its power and authority. A new age of religious feeling was born, Age of Faith.

In the early 1200's wandering friars traveled from place to place preaching and spreading the Church's ideas. Like monks, friars tooks vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience. Unlike monks, friars did not live apart from the world in monasteries. Instead, they preached to the poor throughout Europe's towns and cities. Friars owned nothing and lived bu begging.

Women played an important role in the spiritual revival. Women joined the Dominicans, Benedictines and Franciscans. In 1212, a woman named Clare and her friend Francis of Assisi founded the Franciscan order for women. It was known as the Poor Clares. In Germany, Hildegard of Bingen, a mystic and musician, founded a Benedictine convent in 1147. Like friars, these women lived in poverty and worked to help the poor and sick. Unlike the friars, women were not allowed to travel from place to place as preachers.

he increased france territory by the end of his reign he had tripled france lands

For hundreds of years, peasants had depended on oxen to pull their plows. Oxen lived on the poorest straw and stubble, so they were easy to keep. Horses needed better food, but a team of horses could plow three times as much as a team of oxen. Before farmers could use horses, a better harness was needed. Sometime before 900, farmers in Europe began using a harness that fitted across the horses chest, enabling it to pull a plow, replacing oxen.