not be lost sight of in considering the various
popular movements of the earlier half of the sixteenth century. The
world was still essentially mediaeval; men were still dominated by
mediaeval ways of looking at things and still immersed in mediaeval
conditions of life. It is true that out of this mediaeval soil the new
individualistic society was beginning to grow, but its manifestations
were as yet not so universally apparent as to force a recognition of
their real meaning. It was still possible to regard the various
symptoms of change, numerous as they were, and far-reaching as we now
see them to have been, as sporadic phenomena, as rank but unessential
overgrowths on the old society, which it was possible by pruning and
the application of other suitable remedies to get rid of, and thereby
to restore a state of pristine health in the body political and
social.

Biblical phrases and the notion of Divine Justice now took the place
in the popular mind formerly occupied by Church and Emperor. All the
then oppressed classes of society--the small peasant, half villein,
half free-man; the landless journeyman and town-proletarian; the
beggar by the wayside; the small master, crushed by usury or
tyrannized over by his wealthier colleague in the guild, or by the
town-patriciate; even the impoverished knight, or the soldier of
fortune defrauded of his pay; in short, all with whom times were bad,
found consolation for their wants and troubles, and at the same time
an incentive to action, in the notion of a Divine Justice which should
restore all things, and the advent of which was approaching. All had
Biblical phrases tending in the direction of their immediate
aspirations in their mouths.

As bearing on the development and propaganda of the new ideas, the
existence of a new intellectual class, rendered possible by the new
method of exchange through money (as opposed to that of barter), which
for a generation past had been in full swing in the larger towns, must
not be forgotten. Formerly land had been the essential condition of
livelihood; now it was no longer so. The "universal equivalent,"
money, conjoined with the printing press, was rendering a literary
class proper, for the first time, possible. In the same way the
teacher, physician, and the small lawyer were enabled to subsist as
followers of independent professions, apart from the special service
of the Church or as part of the court-retinue of some feudal
potentate.