man, between
the visible creation and the unseen world. It was a theory of a material
rather than a spiritual order: it reduced the things of the spirit into
terms of the things of the flesh. It was crude, it was easily
comprehensible, it was fitted to the mental conditions of the age.

The power which the Church claimed, and which to a large degree it
exercised over the imagination and over the conduct of the Middle Ages,
was the power which belonged to its head as the earthly representative
and vicegerent of God. No wonder that such power was often abused, and
that the corruption among the ministers of the Church was wide-spread.
Yet in spite of abuse, in spite of corruption, the Church was the ark of
civilization.

The religious--no less than the intellectual--life of Europe had revived
in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and had displayed its fervor in
the marvels of Crusades and of church-building,--external modes of
manifesting zeal for the glory of God, and ardor for personal salvation.
But with the progress of intelligence the spirit which had found its
expression in these modes of service, now, in the thirteenth century in
Italy, fired the hearts of men with an even more intense and far more
vital flame, quickening within them sympathies which had long lain
dormant, and which now at last burst into activity in efforts and
sacrifices for the relief of misery, and for the bringing of all men
within the fold of Christian brotherhood. St. Francis and St. Dominic,
in founding their orders, and in setting an example to their brethren,
only gave measure and direction to a common impulse.

Yet such were the general hardness of heart and cruelty of temper which
had resulted from the centuries of violence, oppression, and suffering,
out of which Italy with the rest of Europe was slowly emerging, that the
strivings of religious emotion and the efforts of humane sympathy were
less powerful to bring about an improvement in social order than
influences which had their root in material conditions. Chief among
these was the increasing strength of the civic communities, through the
development of industry and of commerce. The people of the cities,
united for the protection of their common interests, were gaining a
sense of power. The little people, as they were called,--mechanics,
tradesmen, and the like,--were organizing themselves, and growing strong
enough to compel the great to submit to the restrictions of a more or