similarly governed. Logically this meant a
theocracy, and the bull of Boniface VIII, by which he claimed that every
human creature was subject to the Roman pontiff, was its necessary
outcome. But a theocracy was only a means, and a means that was never
greatly emphasized in the best days of the papacy. It was the end that
mattered; and the end was the moulding of human life into conformity
with divine truth. The end may appear fantastic, unless one remembers
the plenitude of means which stood at the command of the mediaeval
Church. The seven sacraments had become the core of her organization.
Central among the seven stood the sacrament of the Mass, in which bread
and wine were transubstantiated into the divine body and blood of our
Lord. By that sacrament men could touch God; and by its mediation the
believer met the supreme object of his belief. Only the priest could
celebrate the great mystery; and only those who were fit could be
admitted by him to participation. The sacrament of penance, which became
the antechamber, as it were, to the Mass, enabled the priest to
determine the terms of admission. Outside the sacraments stood the
Church courts, exercising a large measure of ethical and religious
discipline over all Christians; and in reserve, most terrible of all
weapons, were the powers of excommunication and interdict, which could
shut men and cities from the rites of the Church and the presence of the
Lord. Who shall say, remembering these things, that the aims of the
mediaeval Church were visionary or impracticable?

For a time, and in some measure, they were actually accomplished. Let us
look at each estate in turn, and measure the accomplishment--speaking
first of the knightly world, and the Church's control of war and peace;
then of the world of the commons, and the Church's control of trade and
commerce; and last of the clerical world and the Church's control of
learning and education.

The control of war and peace was a steady aim of the Church from the
beginning of the eleventh century. The evil of feudalism was its
propensity to private war. To cure that evil the Church invented the
Truce of God. The Truce was a diocesan matter. The 'form' of Truce was
enacted in a diocesan assembly, and the people of the diocese formed a
_communitas pacis_ for its enforcement. There was no attempt to put an
absolute stop to private war; the Truce was only directed to a
limitation of the times and seasons in which feuds c