is the clear light of a Christian Church, and the definite outline of a
single society, of which all are baptized members, and by which all are
knit together in a single fellowship.

Economically the world was as different from our own as it was
geographically. Money, if not unknown, was for the most part unused. It
had drifted eastwards, in the latter days of the Roman Empire, to
purchase silks and spices; and it had never returned. From the days of
Diocletian, society had been thrown back on an economy in kind. Taxes
took the form either of payments of personal service or of quotas of
produce: rents were paid either in labour or in food. The presence of
money means a richly articulated society, infinitely differentiated by
division of labour, and infinitely connected by a consequent nexus of
exchange. The society of the Middle Ages was not richly articulated.
There were merchants and artisans in the towns; but the great bulk of
the population lived in country villages, and gained subsistence
directly from the soil. Each village was practically self-sufficing; at
the most it imported commodities like iron and salt; for the rest, it
drew on itself and its own resources. This produced at once a great
uniformity and a great isolation. There was a great uniformity, because
most men lived the same grey, quiet life of agriculture. The peasantry
of Europe, in these days when most men were peasants, lived in the same
way, under the same custom of the manor, from Berwick to Carcassonne,
and from Carcassonne to Magdeburg. But there was also a great isolation.
Men were tied to their manors; and the men of King's Ripton could even
talk of the 'nation' of their village. If they were not tied by
conditions of status and the legal rights of their lord, they were still
tied, none the less, by the want of any alternative life. There were
towns indeed; but towns were themselves very largely agricultural--the
homes of _summa rusticitas_--and what industry and commerce they