In one set of respects the Church during the feudal epoch satisfied the conditions of good government; in another, it did not.  Its power was uniformly distributed, it drew its recruits from all classes, and entrusted the rule to the most capable.  It was in close touch with every grade of mankind; every colony of serfs, even, had its priest.  It was the most popular and most accessible society of the time, the most open to all talents and all noble ambitions.  But, on the other hand, it failed in that all-important requisite of good government, respect for liberty.  It denied the rights of individual reason in spiritual matters, and it claimed the right to compel belief—­a claim that placed it in some dependence upon the temporal powers, since as a purely spiritual body, governing by influence and not by force, it could not persecute without the aid of the secular arm.

To sum up, the Church exerted an immense and on the whole a beneficent influence on ideas, sentiments, and conduct; but from the political point of view the Church was nearly always the interpreter and defender of the theocratic system and the Roman Imperial system—­that is, of religious and civil despotism.

IV.—­The Towns

Like the Church, the municipalities survived the downfall of the Roman empire.  Their history varied greatly in different parts of Europe, but none the less some observations can be made that are broadly accurate with respect to most of them.

From the fifth to the tenth century, the state of the towns was a state neither of servitude nor of liberty.  They suffered all the woes that are the fate of the weak; they were the prey of continual violence and depredation; yet, in spite of the fearful disorders of the time, they preserved a certain importance.  When feudalism was established, the towns lost such independence as they had possessed; they found themselves under the heel of feudal chiefs.  But feudalism did bring about a sort of peace, a sort of order; and with the slightest gleam of peace and order a man’s hope revives, and on the revival of hope he takes to work.  So it was with the towns.  New wants were created; commerce and industry arose to satisfy them; wealth and population slowly returned.

But industry and commerce were absolutely without security; the townsmen were exposed to merciless extortion and plundering at the hands of their feudal overlords.  Nothing irritates a man more than to be harassed in his toil, thus deprived of its promised fruits.  The only way in which the towns could defend themselves from the violence of their masters was by using violence themselves.  So in the eleventh century we find town after town rising in revolt against its despot, and winning from him a charter of liberty.