Page:A short history of social life in England.djvu/106

86 new society, resting on a democratic basis, where knowledge alone gave superiority, and ancestry counted for nought. Masters and poor scholars began to discuss matters hitherto taken for granted, and the attitude of the Pope towards England was eagerly disputed. But, at the same time, a great religious "revival" was in process, instituted by the friars who now poured across the seas into England. The Dominican and Franciscan brothers played no small part in the social life of the people. They not only preached a higher life, but they taught sanitation and ventilation; they nursed the outcast leper and ministered to the sick and needy; they fought the hideous crime of the thirteenth century, and pierced the darkness that had gathered over the country.