There is always a fascination about trying to discern patterns in the course of the world's history, and this perhaps as much as anything else explains the Phenomenally popular, as distinct from professional, interest in Professor Toynbee's Studies in History. A more particular source of fascination is picking out the turning points of history. Toynbee, for instance, suggests that the decline of the West began in what had hitherto been considered the high Middle Ages, to be precise in the years immediately. Mediately preceding the pontificate of Hildebrand. To be more precise he tracks it down to a small action on the part Hildebrand before he became pope, when he hired thugs to counter-attack the thugs who were stealing the offerings of Peter's pence from the altar of St Peter's.