cultural--the
homes of _summa rusticitas_--and what industry and commerce they
practised was the perquisite and prerogative of local guilds. Custom was
king of all things, and custom had assorted men in compartments in which
they generally stayed. The kaleidoscopic coming and going of a society
based on monetary exchanges--its speedy riches and speedy bankruptcies,
its embarrassment of alternative careers all open to talents--these were
unthought and undreamed of. The same uniformity and the same isolation
marked also, if in a less degree, the knightly class which followed the
profession of arms. A common feudal system, if we can call that a system
which was essentially unsystematic, reigned over the whole of Western
Europe, and, when Western Europe went crusading into Syria, established
itself in Syria. Historians have tried to establish distinctions between
the feudalism of one country and that of another--between the feudalism
of England, for instance, and that of France. It is generally held
nowadays that they have failed to establish the distinction. A fief in
England was uniform with a fief in France, as a manor in one country was
uniform with manors in other countries, and a town in one country with
towns in others. 'One cannot establish a line of demarcation between
German and French towns,' says a famous Belgian historian, 'just as one
cannot distinguish between French and German feudalism.'[16] The
historian of the economic and institutional life of the Middle Ages
will err unless he proceeds on the assumption of its general uniformity.
But the uniformity of the fief, like that of the manor and the town, was
compatible with much isolation. Each fief was a centre of local life and
a home of local custom. The members of the feudal class lived, for the
most part, local and isolated lives. Fighting, indeed, would bring them
together; but when the 'season' was over, and the forty days of service
were done, life ran back to its old ruts in the manor-hall, and if some
of the summer was spent in company, much of the winter was spent in
isolation. On a society of this order--stable, customary, uniform, with
its thousands of isolated centres--the Church descended with a
quickening inspiration and a permeating unity. Most of us find a large
play for our minds to-day in the competition of economics or the
struggles of politics. The life of the mind was opened to the Middle
Ages by the hands of the Church. We may almost say