of feudalism was that it fostered to excess
the warlike spirit. Of its very nature, the system was a complex one. It
gave rise to countless misunderstandings between the various grades of
its involved hierarchy. The opportunities and plausible pretexts for
misunderstandings, quarrels and war were many. A petty quarrel in
Burgundy, in Champagne, in the Berry in France, involved not only the
duke and count of these territories but almost every vassal or feudal
lord in the province. The same might be said of the German nobles in
Suabia, Thuringia and Franconia. Private wars were frequent, and though
the barbarism of the past ages had almost completely disappeared under
the teaching of the Gospel, these contests, as might be expected, were
both sanguinary and wasteful.

The Church fought manfully against these private wars. It took every
possible means to prevent them entirely. When in the nature of things,
it found it impossible to do away with them altogether, it tried to
mitigate their horrors, to limit their field of operation, to diminish
their savagery. If the kingly authority was flouted, save perhaps when a
sturdy ruler like William the Conqueror in England, or Hugh Capet in
France, showed that there was a man at the helm, who meant to rule and
was not afraid to quell rebellious earls and make them obey, there was
one power these mail-clad warriors respected. They respected the
Apostles Peter and Paul, they respected My Lord the Pope, and the
Bishops of France and Normandy and England who shared in their
authority. They flouted a king's edict, but none but hardened criminals
among them laughed at an episcopal or a Papal excommunication.

These rude men, and it places their rude age high in the scale of
civilization, respected religion. They lowered the sword before the
Cross. The Church had for the disobedient and the refractory one
terrible weapon, which she was loath to use, but which she occasionally
used with swift and tragic effect, the weapon of excommunication. Many a
modern historian or philosopher has smiled good-naturedly and in mild
contempt at this weapon used by the Church to frighten her children,
much as children are frightened by flaunting some horrid tale of ogre or
hobgoblin before them. Yet the student of history might profitably study
the use which the Church has made of such an instrument, and find in it
one of the most effective causes of social regeneration in the Middle
Ages.

The Church,