Volatility in the West during the 9th and 10th centuries pushed Europeans to strive for a more stable way of life. The institution of feudalism and the monastic rule of Saint Benedict arose in response to this problem and provided what the scattered kingdoms of the ancient Roman Empire were struggling to achieve. The death of Charlemagne, the succession to power of his son Louis and the signing of the Treaty of Verdun began the collapse of the strong and united Europe that had previously existed. Soon after the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire the West began to face myriad problems. “The renewed invasions of the Vikings, Magyars, and Muslims and the disintegration of the Carolingian Empire led to the birth of a new type of relationship between free individuals” (Spielvogel 163). The decline of governmental authority and protection forced peasants, who made up the majority of the medieval population, to depend on landowning lords and barons who acquired their estates as a decentralized sovereign power. This relationship based on the context of a subordinate's submission to a superior became known as feudalism. Coinciding with the collapse of the government came a transformation of the Church through how members of the religious community lived, worked, and worshiped. Monasticism, such as that developed by Saint Benedict, was formed as a response to problems within the Church and the need to structure religious life. The Rule of Saint Benedict and feudalism are prime examples of how there was a single-minded search for stability in medieval Europe. “As governments fell, powerful nobles took control of large swaths of land. They needed men to fight for them, so arose the practice of giving land grants to vass... middle of paper... time when much of the barbarian West was only nominally Christian, Benedict's Rule kept alive the spirit of pursuing a life of evangelical perfection” (Reid 50). “Benedict's rule, which was a synthesis of several rules, could apply to any number of monasteries and places” (Vidmar 79). This universality of his rule helped to stabilize not only monasticism and the church, but also to infect the common people and nobility that the monks encountered. Feudalism and the monastic rule of St. Benedict both exemplify the search for stability in the medieval Western world. Together they healed the chaos caused by the disintegration of the Carolingian Empire and the destructive invasions of the 9th century by correcting the military, political and religious status quo. This set the West on the path to progress, expansion, and domination for centuries to come.